in eyed SON ome an ie at ae oP 


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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2021 with funding from 
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 


_ httos://archive.org/details/mumbojumbo00clew 


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By 


Henry Clews, Junior 


BAIN LAND Daley Be Ro Grice: 
PUBLISHERS os New York 





Copyright, 
BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc. 
1923 


Caution—All persons are hereby warned that the play published 
in this volume is fully protected under the copyright laws of the 
United States and all foreign countries, and is subject to royalty, 
and anyone presenting said play without the consent of the 
Author or his recognized agents, will be liable to the penalties 
by law provided. 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


With love which passeth understanding, I 
dedicate this play to the two most valiant, 
radiant, generous characters I have ever 
known: my beautiful and beloved Mother, 
and my beautiful and beloved Wife. 


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{ ae: 6. "I MA , vat ty 


bran eed 
eyo) |), Hi y tH 
y | . i rh 4 
Tynes RRS Fe bk 
fo Oran 


tie t 
r. 1u 





Contents 


By Way of Introduction 
Characters 
Jah an Oe 
merely. LL t 
Act III . 
CULE V's 


PAGE 


62 
127 
161 
198 
241 


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By Way of Introduction 


OTWITHSTANDING the fact that one of the 
N most-advertised and “Best Seller” magazine 

philosophers — Charlie Chaplin’s socialistic 
friend, H. G. Wells or Blasco Ibafiez, or some equally 
illustrious, democratic, literary financier—has de- 
clared with the sententious gusto of a furious thinker 
that the spirit of Gongorism* has vanished for all 
time, I—although I am possibly the only American 
who is not a member of some “Celebrated Four,” 
“World-Famous Six” or “Immortal Dozen’”—never- 
theless venture to observe that never has this spirit 
been so universally rampant as it is to-day. 

In previous decadent epochs of unbridled esthetic 
luxury, preciosity, which is always the result of pre- 
tentiousness, over-specialization, self-consciousness, and 
falsification of values, was restricted to the court and 
aristocratic circles of great cities. But in our era 
of mechanical, serialized, department-store luxury it 
may be found in every slum and village, with rouged 
lips, face thickly smeared with youthifying, beautifying 
powders, and bedizened in Futuristic frock, ‘“Slender- 
izing Corselette,” ““Baby-Louis” heels, imitation pearls, 
near-silk stockings and Cubist coif, tangoing to Dada- 
ist orchestral groans and crashes, with “Decolty” 
bosom glued to “Society Brand Form-fitting Suitings” 
of butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker, who, with 
arms crooked into poses of super-genteel, neurotic vul- 
garity, lips pursed with sweet squeamishness, and little 
fingers rigidly extended in manicured elegance, squirm 

1An affected elegance or euphuism of style, for which the 


Spanish poet Luis de Gongora and others of his time were noted: 
called also cultism or preciosity. 
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and wriggle with mincing step of Jack gentleman and 
demi-rep. 

As the over-refinement and inbred thinking of the 
seventeenth century was symbolized in the aristocratic 
preciousness of madrigal and minuet, so is the over- 
vulgarity of our mongrel, democratic, comfort-crazed, 
third sex epoch of super-palace hotel, sex-equality, 
sillymental socialism, ‘‘Elite Toilet Paper,” ascetic 
business and xsthetic plumbing symbolized in the erotic, 
communal, inverted preciousness of jazz, Cubist art, 
and free-ass verse, brayed out by neurasthenic femmes 
du monde, or rather femmes de Ritz, mental parvenus, 
refined cooks, cultured bottle-washers, and _navel- 
centric, moon-eyed, pornographic lunatics, suffering 
from literary claustrophobia, Rimbauditis and Walt 
Whitmania. 

In the present democratic decadence, brought about 
by mass education, commercial science, and automatic 
power machinery, which have driven humanity from 
church and artisan shop into factory, where faith, love, 
chivalry, dignity, respect, mystery and romance have 
been ground into dust, cultism is not confined to art, 
literature and choregraphy: all activities and pursuits 
have been infected by it, including commerce, politics, 
laws, sports, athletics, and even science itself. 

If in Moliére’s time it was considered inelegant to 
refer to a chair as other than a “convenience of con- 
versation”; so would our fastidious “fan” of to-day 
find it equally crude and ignorant for his “sphere,” 
“orb,” “pill” or “‘pellet”? to be simply called a base- 
ball, or his “wand,” “scepter” and “sacred willow” a 
bat. And just as Cathos and Madelon in Les Pré- 
2 





By Way of Introduction 


cieuses Ridicules re-christened themselves Aminte and 
Polixéne, in like manner has the world-famous idol of 
the “diamond” emerged from the proletarian chrysalis 
of George Herman into the romantic biblical maiden- 
butterfly of “Babe Ruth.” 

What modern scarlet-coated M.F.H. would not be 
shocked, and even pained, to have “the waving of 
hounds’ sterns” referred to as the “wagging of dogs’ 
tails”? And would not a fisherman of the Ristigouche 
élite shudder with indignation at the thought of hav- 
ing ‘‘caught” instead of “killed” a salmon? 

Latin purists, even at the moment of Rome’s great- 
est degeneration, when her literati, through Archaisms, 
Grecisms, Africanisms, and Plebeianisms, had attained 
the rarefied summit of pan-ism and perfected incom- 
prehensibility, would appear almost trite in compari- 
son to our baseball scribes, sport savants, social ma- 
hatmas, political messiahs, commercial prophets, and 
art pontiffs, who in the holy press display such amaz- 
ing knowledge and erudition in the most labyrinthine 
forms of finical commonness. And as commonness, 
owing to its complexity, demands infinitely more fore- 
thought than does gentle refinement, which springs 
always from spontaneity and simplicity, it is quite 
natural that these self-styled *‘Column-Conductors” or 
“Colyumists” can only be fully appreciated in their 
more subtle gradations and symbolic flights of vul- 
gardulianism by their initiates. 

Vulgarity, which begins where faith leaves off, has 
of necessity become in our epoch of scepticism, unbe- 
lief and amorality such a universal cult, that even our 
bow-wows, dick-birds, pretty-pollies, pussy-cats and 

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other domestic pets seem to be affected by it. I know 
of one Colyumist, for instance, who has become world- 
famous through a literary idyll entitled Archie the 
Cockroach. What, I wonder, would Fabre, the “Homer 
of Insects,” that simple, spontaneous poet of poets, 
have thought of such a choice and euphemistic title 
as that? 

To the gross, smug, precious varieties of vulgarity, 
which have always existed until recently in compara- 
tively modified phases, the upper urbanites and phari- 
sees of the last century have added vicious, commercial 
and scientific vulgarity. With these new forms they 
are endeavouring to maintain their supremacy over 
the proletariat, which has been so brutalized by machin- 
ery, and corrupted by democracy and mass-education, 
that it can no longer be appealed to or controlled as it 
was in thoroughbred, aristocratic, pre-power-machine 
times, by chivalry, nobility of sentiment, and religious 
idealism—qualities, moreover, almost unknown to the 
philistinic bourgeois, and rapidly disappearing with 
churchman, artist, craftsman, peasant, aristocrat and 
soldier. ) 

Machine-science and democracy, by annihilating 
religion, art, aristocracy, peasantry and _ soldiery, 
have dammed off those sources which, when harmoni- 
ously intermingled, produce the clearest stream of 
human happiness. For the soldier, too, has been robbed 
by science of his brilliant crest and plumage, to be 
capped instead by a gas mask, and driven like a brown 
rat into stinking trenches and verminous subterranean 
dug-outs to such democratic battle-songs as Madelon 
and Tipperary; while Mothers, Sisters, Sweethearts, 
4: 





By Way of Introduction 


and Wives are left behind in serried factory rows to 
turn out poison bombs, organize charity bazaars, com- 
pete for war decorations, work up “Red Cross Drives” 
with altruistic old men, who fight and rage against 
“Peace Offensives” and be courted by food and muni- 
tion profiteers, pacifists, ‘“‘conscientious objectors,” 
and rotten-hearted professional trouble makers. And 
while their compatriots are being slaughtered at the 
front, these last-named hyenas, in lamb-skins of social- 
ism, sneak and prowl about in the rear, with hopes of 
stirring up revolution, or betraying their country into 
the hands of the enemy, in order to create chaos, and 
thereby obtain personal power and political control 
over a people dazed with anguish, and engulfed in help- 
lessness and despair. 

These human reptiles and political scavengers have 
always existed, but to-day, as in all eras of dissolution, 
they are as thick as maggots in a cheese. They can 
only succeed, however, if the ground has been pre- 
viously prepared for them, as it was in the French and 
the present Russian Revolution, by renegade aristo- 
crats; for though the plague of revolution breaks out 
at the bottom, it germinates always at the top, where 
decadence first appears with unbelief, snobbish senti- 
mental socialism, sex-inversion and preciousness—the 
four advance agents of social senescence, declination 
and chaos. 

Although the causes of our decadence—the corner- 
stone of which was laid by James Watt, with his devil- 
ish invention of the automatic power machine, destined 
to uninvent civilization—are quite dissimilar to those 
of former periods of decay, the results are essentially 

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the same; only, instead of remaining localized, and, 
as I have previously remarked, restricted to a very 
limited caste, the proletariat and lower middle class 
of a greater part of the world have now also become 
contaminated and poisoned. | 

In France it was the Illuminists, the “Salonaires,” 
and their idols the Encyclopedists, headed by Voltaire 
and Rousseau—those past masters of mischief-making 
—who unwittingly encouraged Count Mirabeau to 
open the doors to the sewage rats who brought in the 
scourge of revolution. In Russia it was Count Tolstoi, 
Prince Kropotkin and other decadent nobles who pre- 
pared the way for such intellectual sadists and moral 
idiots as Lenin, Trotsky, Chicherin, Radek and all the 
other minotaurs and rattlesnakes. 

We cannot, alas! boast of aristocrats, but we have, 
nevertheless, hosts of sentimental, decadent burghers, 
like Messrs. Wells, Barbusse, Bertrand Russell, and 
Shaw, who, in beautiful—no, costly—homes (Demo- 
crats and socialists are beauty proof, communists and 
syndicalists are humanity proof), and surrounded by 
every conceivable luxury (including even Sealyhams, 
the most expensive of pets), are industriously planning 
a dazzling Babouvistic future for us. And as “my 
dear Wells” has declared that “Lenin is beloved of all 
that is energetic in Russia,” you may imagine the 
future! At all events I am energetic enough to consider 
this as the most fatuously inhuman and pathologically 
silly statement ever made outside of a mad-house. “My 
dear Jones,” who seems to be one of the very few regen- 
erate men alive with a fearless pen in one hand and a 
sword of virile sentiment in the other, will, I am sure, 


6 


By Way of Introduction 


not find that I have been too energetic in this state 
ment. Bis! bis! Henry Arthur Jones. 

Many of our “Salonaires” too, or rather “Saloon- 
aires” and “Ritzonianaires,” especially those whose 
jewels out-glitter their brains, are doing “their bit,” 
and rarely lose an opportunity to announce trium- 
phantly that “the day of the working man is at hand 
and that he is about to come into his own.” 

I have often wondered if the “Man in the Mass” 
realizes to what extent “his p.oletarianship” is wor- 
shipped by these progressive ladies of leisure and 
pleasure, whose only knowledge of the filiws populi is 
through their flunkeys, French chefs and chauffeurs, 
who impress me as having not only “come into their 
own,” but into our own as well! 

What is typical of so many of our ultra-modern 
chic, cosmopolitanized, Carltonized, Ciro-ized, trans- 
atlanticized, social-columnized, democratized ladies of 
fashion is, that when they open their eyes they invari- 
ably close their hearts, and when their hearts are open 
their eyes are shut. This lack of co-ordination between 
eye and heart, which, by the way, also characterizes 
modern newspaper and bill-board scientists, would ac- 
count for the rather surprising fact that our smartest 
communistic weeklies—the editors of which are invari- 
ably to be found in the smartest houses, eating the 
smartest food and indulging in the smartest conversa- 
tion—are practically entirely supported by these high- 
falutin dames, who mercilessly hold their docile sex- 
shattered masochistic husbands to dollar-grubbing, in 
order to have larger jewels, larger houses and larger 


7 





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dinner-parties, with hopes, no doubt, of thereby fur- 
thering the sacred cause of socialism. 

It is also in this orchidaceous, super-“spiffy” “nec 
pluribus impar” atmosphere that the germ of sex- 
inversion or perversion first begins to propagate under 
such weird “‘piffile” as sex-equality and women’s rights; 
phrases evidently originally concocted by platonic gen- 
tlemen of falsetto voices and plain maidens on the shady 
side of middle age. 

Years ago, a beautiful suffragette, who was suffering 
from the chic-est mental contagions, endeavoured to 
convince me that there was absolutely no difference, 
either mental or physical, between the sexes. She was 
“carrying on” at the time with her husband and sey- 
eral lovers. I also remember another radiant penthe- 
silean who became so incensed at the revolting idea that 
any possible difference could be considered to exist 
between man and woman that she armed herself to 
the teeth with bristling scorn for the poor machine 
driven, press-ridden, business-crazed, sex-shackled 
American male, and rushed from magazine to news- 
‘paper, crying out: “Are women people?” Personally 
I have never thought that those women I admired the 
most were people, and it would be inconceivable for me 
to think that the women nearest and dearest to me 
were merely people, like us men. Then, too, the word 
“people” smacks of collectivism, which is the antithesis 
of all that is beautiful, noble, generous, sunlit and 
inspiring. Of course the collectivist could hardly be 
expected to agree, for although he is apt to refer to 
his true love as “soul-mate,” in reality he, like the 
scientist, thinks of her in chemical formulas. Here, 
8 





By Way of Introduction 


for instance, is an affectionately domestic inventory, 
which I have just come across, by a collectivist and 
modern scientific lover, who declares that his wife with 
eleven of her friends contain sufficient hydrogen to 
inflate a balloon of a thousand cubic metres, capable 
of lifting three or four people. He further illuminates 
our fancies with the assurance that in his wife there 
is sufficient carbon to manufacture sixty-five gross of 
pencils, enough phosphorus to tip eight hundred thou- 
sand matches, iron for seven large nails, and fat to 
produce thirteen pounds of candles. 

Doctor Louis Berman of Columbia University, who 
declared with ecstasy that “‘the chemistry of the soul’ 
was a “magnificent phrase,” will probably have another 
attack of scientific ecstatics if he ever comes across 
this rhapsody of domestic wealth, which sounds to me 
more like a pork-packer’s evaluation of one of his swine 
than a husband’s appreciation of his wife. But then, 
of course, I am hopelessly unscientific—in fact, so hope- 
lessly unscientific that I am very sceptical about the 
experiment which Doctor Hereward Carrington, Direc- 
tor of the American Psychical Institute Laboratory 
of New York, proposes to make on an anesthetized cat 
to determine whether it has a soul. In describing the 
experiment Professor Carrington says: “We shall 
place a cat in a glass box just large enough to hold it. 
This box will then be placed in another glass box five 
inches larger. The air in the space will be reduced. 
If the astral body exists, little electrical particles will 
condense on the surface of the astral body, like dew- 
drops on the grass.” 

I don’t know why it is, but every time I think of 

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Doctor Carrington and his dewdrops on a cat’s soul— 
and I think of him much more than is good for me, I 
fear—the following lines repeat themselves over and 
over again in my mind :— 


“The Walrus and the Carpenter 
Were walking close at hand; 
They wept like anything to see 
Such quantities of sand: 

‘If this were only cleared away,’ 
They said, ‘it wouLp be grand.’ ” 


A psycho-analyst could, no doubt, explain why the 
Walrus, the Carpenter and Doctor Carrington have 
become inseparable in my subconsciousness. 

Notwithstanding the fact that many of my sex have 
been obliged to dock their combs, clip their spurs, 
cluck, and even grow hen feathers, I am nevertheless 
endeavouring to hold on with might and main to all 
the blessings and sex differences which I received from 
the hands of the Creator through my well-beloved 
parents, and I only hope and pray, with all the fervour 
and power of my instinctively uncollectivistic and 
passionately sex-differentiating nature (even as to 
gnats), that I shall always be able to greet His dawn 
until the day of my death with crest, spur, and at 
least one cock-a-doodle-doo, even if my crowing does 
awaken scorn and ridicule among the sleek-sex-equality 
capons, communistic cuckoos, and sentimental guinea- 
fowl, who seem to be increasing to an alarming 
extent. 

Not so long ago I remember meeting a combination 
of all three who had been so completely shorn of every 
10 


By Way of Introduction 


vestige of cockdom that he actually resented having 
his charming little blonde hen addressed as “Mrs.,’’ 
claiming that a husband had no right to ask his wife 
to renounce her maiden name. Consequently, ever 
since their marriage, this super-modern epicenian pair 
of soul-mates have been pecking and clucking about 
together as Mr. Rooster and Miss Hen. 

Recently I even heard of a case where an exquisitely 
beautiful little matron pullet absolutely insisted on 
being addressed by all her friends as Mr. Cocka-lorum. 
A strange anomaly indeed! but highly significant of our 
juiceless, sexless, joyless, standardized world of to-day, 
where men have turned from romance, individualism, 
religion and art, to science, collectivism, self-exploita- 
tion, and the power machine. 

I can think of no more pathetic and strikingly pitiful 
sight than a group of stark and wild-eyed militant 
suffragettes flagellating themselves into sex-frenzy, not, 
as is generally thought, to obtain the vote—about 
which women will always remain indifferent—but in 
reality to goad decadent, mechanized man into his 
former sense of chivalry, and reawaken, reflame in him 
the smouldering romantic sex-interest, through which 
women had inconceivably more influence than they now 
have by suffrage. For they then directed and even 
controlled those in power with God-given sex-attraction, 
instead of with merely man-given vote. 

I feel sure that the Turkish ladies of the harem are 
much happier than are our enfranchised love-lorn ladies, 
who have been encouraged and allowed by sub-men to 
vote away their divine influence over super-men. The 
hard, thin, compressed mouth with drooping corners 


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and the shrill, nasal, querulous voice of the average 
American woman are tragic tell-tales of her unrequited 
desire for companionship, love and romance, and the 
utter sexlessness of her life. I am, however, convinced 
that, even among the most progressive and Amazonian 
of our little hens (excluding those, naturally, with 
androgynal clucks), there is not one who would not drop 
her vote in the dust and go skedaddling back to roman- 
tic pre-power-machine days were she to hear the trium- 
phant trumpeting call of a troubadour cock. But as 
the unfortunate little twentieth-century pullet is now 
awakened by a factory whistle, or at best by the 
patented mechanical crow of a standardized, democratic 
cock, far be it from me to blame her for pecking about 
for votes in the modern barn-yard of concrete and cor- 
rugated iron. 

Although the air vibrates with assertions that there 
is little, if any, difference between the sexes, I shall 
continue nevertheless to think, feel and dream that there 
exists a world, nay, a universe, of glorious, triumphant, 
beautiful, exotic, supreme, exquisite, mysterious, infi- 
nite, everlasting difference, and it is this divine differ- 
ence which has given us love, hope, art, life—Gop. 

But let us now resume our analogies of past and 
present expressions of Gongorism, or self-conscious 
affectation, which, as I have pointed out, appears with 
the three already indicated forms of social degenera- 
tion. 

How enchanted, for instance, would the Cicisbei and 
their Mistresses of the Italian precioso period have been 
with Gayne Adolphus Baron de Meyer’s esoteric photo- 
graphs of ritualistic powder-puffs, sacramental lingerie, 
12 


By Way of Introduction 


and ceremonial hosiery, which this recondite artist 
suffuses with mystical light, and reproduces over mil- 
lions of magazine pages for the enlightenment and 
uplift of millions of beholders. We will quote from one 
of those millions of uplifted admirers who, on this occa- 
sion, has alighted on Harper’s Bazar to warble in 
full-throated rhapsody over the genius of our Baron: 
‘Sometimes there blows down on the planet, from the 
winged winds of destiny, a personality whose force of 
character . . . an intellectual divination, which pene- 
trates to the hidden soul of living human beings with 
the discriminating ability to make this spiritual entity 
vital and articulate.” 

Could Marsden Hartley, our informal adventurer 
in the arts, who informs us that “We have dispensed 
once for all with the silly notion that a work of art 
is made by hand,” and that “Art is a matter of scien- 
tific comprehension,” lilt with more “orchidaceous 
rarity” about one of his pet photographers or “‘zsthetes 
of muscular melody”? But listen to what that mis- 
chievous practical joker, Francis Piccabia, did to poor 
little Marsden when he caught him on his hobby-horse 
rocking through the Arts “with the easy grace that 
becomes any self-respecting humorist,” en route for 
The New Republic, The Nation or The Freeman, and 
taught him the following “‘flap-doodling” “spoofalistic” 
“Dadaism,” or rather Gagaism, which Marsden now 
solemnly recites in public, believing that “Dada is a 
fundamentally religious attitude, analogous to the 
scientist with eyeglass glued to the microscope” (glass 
eye glued to microscope would be still more funda- 
mental, Marsden dear) : 


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“Dada smells of nothing, nothing, nothing. 
It is like your hopes: nothing. 

Like your Paradise: nothing. 

Like your idols: nothing. 

Like your politicians: nothing. 

Like your heroes: nothing. 

Like your artists: nothing. 

Like your religions: nothing.” 


‘A litany like this,” declares Marsden, “coming from 
one of the most notable Dadaists of the day, is too 
edifying for proper expression.” It was, however, most 
unfair of Piccabia not to have told Marsden that he 
had cribbed the above from a poem entitled the Salt 
Herring, written in Paris almost a half century ago: 


“To make all serious men mad, mad, mad. 
And to amuse children little, little, little.” 


It seems to us that Marsden, like most of our boy- 
scouts in the Arts, is becoming almost too adventure- 
some, for if Dada has been able to charm him into 
thinking that “‘nothing is greater than anything else,” 
and “that the charm of Dadaism exists mainly in the 
fact that they wish all things levelled in the mind of 
man to the degree of commonplaces,” what would hap- 
pen were he and his Boswell, Mr. Waldo Frank, to be 
suddenly confronted with a “Boojum”?—which is an 
infinitely more dangerous bird than the commercial, 
domesticated Dada, so popular at present with the 
modern “Arty” cultist bourgeois who “senses effluvia 
of souls,” interprets “psychism of patterns” and “‘is 
vastly oversize as to experience in the spiritual geo- 
metric of the world.” 


14 


By Way of Introduction 


I have often wondered if the Bellman had a pro- 
phetic realization of the enormous influence he was 
destined to wield over modern art and literature. As 
our most famous contemporary artists, poets and 
critics have inspired themselves with his genius, and 
as he was the undoubted founder of our modern art 
schools of “ists” and “isms,” I shall quote a few 
stanzas from his speech made on presenting his mar- 
vellous map to the crew—‘‘a map they could all 
understand.” 


“The Bellman himself, they all praised to the skies— 
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace! 
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise, 
The moment one looked in his face! 


He had bought a large map representing the sea, 

Without the least vestige of land: 

And the crew were much pleased when they found 
it to be 

A map they could all understand. 


‘What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles, and 
Equators, 

Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?’ 

So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply 

‘They are merely conventional signs! 


Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and 
capes, 
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank’ 
(So the crew would protest) ‘that he’s bought us 
the best, 
A perfect and absolute blank.’ 
15 





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This was charming, no doubt: but they shortly 
found out 

That the Captain they trusted so well 

Had only one notion for crossing the ocean, 

And that was to tingle his bell.” 


Methinks I hear in that “tingle” the charlatanism, 
propaganda, self-exploitation and self-conscious pre- 
ciousness of our epoch. 

“Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come 
unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” And 
we all went unto thee, O Lewis Carroll! And you 
filled our playrooms with sunbeams, and our hearts 
with merriment, and later, much later, our minds with 
the light of your immortal lay and supremely unscien- 


tific philosophy: 


“Ah! cruel tree: if I were you, 
And children climbed me, for their sake, 
Though it be winter, I would break 
Into Spring blossoms, white and blue!” 


Poor Wilde in this poem expresses with rare beauty 
the unscientific longing of many of us, but the joyous 
miracle of breaking in mid-winter into Spring blos- 
soms, white and blue, was reserved for you, Lewis 
Carroll! 

But as this is supposed to be a Foreword, I must, 
as Marsden would say, glue myself to the subject, 
although I am amazingly far, as any fool may see, 
from being a scientist,” who, like a barnacle, is so full 

1 As the word science is derived from scire, to know, I have 


always been flabbergasted at the thought of any man having the 
stupendous cheek to call himself a scientist. 


16 


By Way of Introduction 


of natural glue that he cements himself to the first 
accepted fact in sight, thinking it a rock of truth. 
His rock of truth, however, usually turns out to be 
seaweed or rotten log, or ship’s bottom. 

Carlyle, in his intellectual cruises, must have ob- 
served quantities of such barnacles clinging to the 
sides of his ship as he gazed down into “the great deep 
sacred infinitude of nescience, whither we can never 
penetrate, on which all science swims as mere super- 
ficial film.” 

I shall therefore continue by asking you, gentle 
reader, if the Atsthetes of Versailles were ever gath- 
ered around a Clodion or Falconet with more delicate 
and exquisite appreciation than are our modern beatifi- 
cally scientific connoisseurs in pictured magazine adver- 
tisements around “Louis Thirteenth” or “Hepplewhite 
Cabinet Phonographs”; “Super-refined Select Patri- 
cian Motor-Cars,” “‘Parnassian Bath-tubs of Snow- 
drift Enamel” and “Olympian Silentium Water- 
Closets” in “Motor and Plumbing Salons.” 

Our illustrative artists of luxe, aristocratic exclu- 
siveness and chic, are also brilliantly supported, with 
choice word and elegant phrase, by our pedants of 
publicity, advertising the very latest sartorial, gastro- 
nomical and beautifying perfection, “‘savouring of 
high breeding and fashion’s tiptoe mood of happy 
anticipations”; as well as every conceivable kind of 
domestic comfort-contrivance, “which no gentlemen’s 
home en rapport with best and smartest benefit of 
discrimination may be without.” 

How inspiring, for instance, for an initiate of “Golf- 
olatry” to find in magazine art a “Golf-garbed-by- 

17 


Mumbo Jumbo 


Specialist” brother of his belief, wearing “Expressions 
in Bootery,” and bending in contemplation over a 
“Kinesthetic Progress Ball, a Gift that carries Dis- 
tinction,” and to know that in his “Golf Sanctum,” 
depicted in the distance, cool drinks are awaiting him 
in “Puritan Polar Bear Ascetic Refrigerators of Opa- 
lite Glass”; probably thus named not to arouse the 
attention of Billy Sunday’s over-sensitive anti-alcohol 
“Breath Tasters.” 

Were Luther to return to earth, he would, I think, 
_ discover ere long that more ritual exists in the Golf 
Chapels of to-day than in the Church of his time; and 
on finding religion to be a dead issue, and golf a very 
living one, he would undoubtedly start a reformation 
movement of Golf Protestants, and put a ban on the 
luxury of being garbed by specialists; suppress caddy 
acolytes; discontinue cheating dispensations given to 
the richest club-members; dispense with votive offer- 
ings of silver cups; and not permit his followers to 
indulge in more than two wiggle-waggles while address- 
ing the sacred ball. 

These restrictions would unquestionably come as a 
blessing to a great number of fervents who are suffer- 
ing from golf preciousness. I know of innumerable 
cases, not only among the congregations, but also 
among the higher dignitaries of this sport, who have 
become quite ill from the apprehension of ‘*Hoodoo 
Holes.”” There are some, too, who become depressed 
by sunshine owing to the unfortunate habit of looking 
for their shadows as they start to drive. There are 
others who arrive at such hyper-sensitiveness that even 
a whispered word by an onlooker, at the moment of 
18 





By Way of Introduction 





play, may throw them into despair. But those who 
are unable to control their number of wiggle-waggles, 
and finally feel themselves compelled to search for 
imaginary impediments around the ball, suffer, I am 
told, the keenest of tortures. 

Had Dante ever seen them he would, I feel sure, 
have added eternal wiggle-waggling to his list of pun- 
ishments in the Inferno. 

Our statesmen, or rather politicians, of big and 
little stick (statesmen are only produced by monarchial 
systems), are, however, not to be outstripped by our 
advertising bards and pictorial psychologists in inti- 
mate, sweet, and even amorous solicitation of public 
opinion. Few monarchs have been able to inspire 
their courtiers with such tender ingratiating smiles of 
sensuous sycophancy as are worn for mob and kodak 
by our political courtesans, who, with saccharined 
oratory of sentimental proletcultural vulgarity, and 
chattering, flattering familiarity, fish for votes from 
slum and gutter with hearts, eyes, and stomachs over- 
flowing with love for “the plain people.” 

Humorously enough, “the plain people” are now far 
from considering themselves plain. In fact, I even 
fear that the vain, avaricious little political jackals, 
who for years have been “playing big” in 'Teddy-Bear 
and Royal Bengal tiger-skins, while stuffing the prole- 
tarian goose with succulent lies of democratic hypoc- 
risy and emotional refuse scooped out of literary kitch- 


ens of unsuspecting “ladies and gentlemen bountiful,” 

1“Figoism and jealousy are the sources of democracy, which is 
the cradle of mediocre politicians who, having obtained their 
votes through charlatanisms, are never respected by the mass.” 
—RENAN. 


19 





Mumbo Jumbo 


are not only going to be done out of their tit-bit, but 
gobbled up themselves by a “really-truly” Lenin- 
Trotsky wolf. This crafty, rapacious brute has al- 
ready gotten a whiff of the enormous pdté de fois gras 
of folly, vanity, ignorance, and pitiful credulity in 
store for him. 

The Bessie Beattys, Clare Sheridans, Mrs. Snow- 
dens and other parlour coveys of manicured, pedicured, 
hair-waved, jewelled, perfumed, exquisite, beautiful, 
high-born, high-brow ladies of satin, silk, lace lingerie, 
brocades and Soviet sable coats, whose tender, bol- 
shevized, precious, mundane hearts are constantly 
breaking in magazine, newspaper, novelette, and auto- 
biography over love of humanity, plain people, and man 
in the mass, are no doubt eagerly anticipating the above 
feast of truffles and foie gras at which, as ladies-in- 
waiting, they will be able to re-thrill at the ravishing 
sight of “those sensitive speaking hands of a musician,” 
and again lose themselves in “that eternal look” in 
which Bessie tells us in The New Republic, “there was 
something magnificent . . . high like mountain peaks, 
strong, sure, enduring.” Alas! lovely lady, if you 
failed to attain similar heights in Chicherin’s eyes 
(which is highly probable since you still live to tell 
the tale), you certainly have attained snow-peaks in 
mine, for as I gaze up at you in bewildered admiration 
from the nadir of my valley of shadow, I see that you 
have ascended in your article on Chicherin to such a 
rarefied atmosphere of quintessential sentimentality 
that only New Republican climbers could possibly 
breathe in it without being seized with altitudinous 
nausea. 


20 


By Way of Introduction 


With your most gracious permission, I shall take 
the liberty of quoting the following passage from your 
article:—“‘The Red soldier outside his (Chicherin’s) 
door set to guard him sometimes falls asleep. The 
Commissar passes him on tiptoe and says: ‘Sh!! he is 
sleeping,’ to anyone who walks noisily.” 

It is certainly now Clare’s turn to trot out Trotsky, 
her altruistic “man of wit, fire and genius,” her “mag- 
netic chord to Moscow,” her ‘‘Napoleon of peace’! 
Poor Mrs. Snowden and her guileless socialistic suffra- 
getic Philip will no longer be able to repeat their little 
“stunt” with Lenin, for apparently they have since 
discovered that what they mistook for love of human- 
ity in their hero’s eyes was the gleam of paranoia, or 
manic-depressive insanity, brought on by over-indul- 
gence in blood lust and excessive delight in torturing 
his helpless compatriots. It is enough to give the 
world manic-depressive insanity to think of the millions 
of innocent victims who have already been slaughtered, 
starved and fiendishly done to death to gratify the 
degenerate whims of this sadistic monster, who was 
recently compared to Jesus Christ by an amazingly 
fashionable lady writing in an amazingly fashionable 
magazine. And with untold millions of his countrymen 
under blood-soaked clod, and the surviving ninety mil- 
lions living in anguish and horror. Anatoly Maryngoff, 
a mechanized little hirudine communist, excretes with 
wriggling parasitical delight the following lines over 
the May number of Broom:— 


“We trample filial reverence under foot 


e ° 


21 


| Mumbo Jumbo 


To Hell! Our red cancan is a splendid sight 


Is not yesterday squashed like a pigeon 
Under an automobile 
Rushing madly from a garage?” 


But before taking leave of you, my bonnie, Bolshevic 
Bessie, may I suggest that you and your New Republic 
look into certain works on pathology, wherein you 
will find accounts of blood-dripping demons, who, after 
having fondled and tenderly caressed their victims, 
calmly and deliberately tortured them to death; and 
then with “Sh! he is sleeping,” “left the room on 
pointed feet, smiling that things had gone so well,” 
like the barber of Meridian Street. No doubt they, 
like Chicherin, considered themselves uplifters and 
saviours of the human race. 

I do hope that you and yours will follow my sugges- 
tion, for, if not, I fear that in the next issue of 
The New Republic we will probably be told by another 
fair fashionable ““Red Heart” specialist how Chicherin 
and Trotsky, with tear-stained cheeks, pass hand in 
hand from slaughter-house to torture-chamber, exhort- 
ing their Jack Ketches and Chinese executioners to 


“Take her up tenderly, 
Lift her with care; 
Fashion’d so slenderly, 
Young and so fair!” 


Oh! Bessie! I have just seen an entire newspaper 
page advertising in enormous letters a book entitled, 
How Little Social Errors Ruined Their Biggest Chance. 
22 , 





By Way of Introduction 





Do get it and pass it on to The New Republic, for I 
feel that that “Journal of Opinion” lacks at times the 
personal and “human, all too human” touch of Town 
Topics and The Club Fellow; otherwise I find these 
smart social weeklies amazingly similar in their outlook 
on humanity. 

Our prize-fighters, too, whose views on philosophy, 
domestic love, art and politics are published broadcast, 
and are now being “broadcasted,” come in for gushing 
streams of euphuistic adoration and forests of news- 
paper fame. It would be interesting to know how 
many hundreds of thousands of beautiful trees have 
already been sacrificed and turned into machine pulp, 
to be vomited out by the juggernaut printing press in 
glorification of such modern heroes as Dempsey’ and 
Carpentier. 

Of Siki, the negroid slugger who dethroned Carpen- 
tier, we know little as yet,” but it will not be long before 
the Press will be giving us, in editorials, his family 
history and his thoughts, not only on life, but on 
after-life as well. He has, I hear, recently honoured 

1In the February number of Vanity Fair, two entire pages 
are consecrated to “Dempsey’s Olympian Attributes.” Our Olym- 
pian critic Heywood Broun writes: “Like another Siegfried, 
Dempsey had come through all the dangers which were reared 
to make him keep his distance. . . . Dempsey paid his tribute to 
the Brunhilde of the occasion with right hand punches to the 
jaw.” What modern Olympianism! There are photographs too of 
Dempsey’s hands, fists, and forearms “showing the combined 
strength of these dangerous and effective weapons.” On the 
opposite page, Dempsey is posed as a “Penseur.” Most of our 
“Penseurs” and critics, methinks, should be posed as Dempseys. 

2 Since writing the above, this ebullient, ebony negro has become 


one of the most conspicuous men on earth. His views and state- 
ments are cabled around the world. 


23 


| Mumbo Jumbo 


an ambassadorial luncheon with his midnight presence. 

At this moment the front pages of the French Press 
are devoted to propagating the fame of a certain ogre 
who is now on trial for his life and will soon become 
an international figure for having raped, slaughtered, 
Trotskied, quartered and Lenined a little girl of six 
to satisfy his delirium of demoniacal passion. ‘Think 
of how many lovely Socialistic ladies, callous cads, 
pedantic, perfumed prigs, modern poetasters, artists 
and smart newspaper editors would now be prostrating 
themselves at his feet in adoration of his Apollonian 
genius in uplifting humanity had he butchered ten 
thousand little girls instead of one! As it is, we may 
soon expect to see in the Press love-letters and poems 
written to him by his Bolshevic sympathizers and 
admirers. Let us hope that this beast’s lawyer will 
not be inspired to defend this hideous crime by placing 
it on a political basis, for otherwise the head of his 
monstrous client will most probably drop into the Hall 
of Fame instead of into the basket of the guillotine. 

Proudhon, descendant of Hebert and Clootz, and 
grandfather of Bolshevism, who declared that “God 
is folly and cowardice; God is evil,” and his worthy 
disciple, Bakunin, whose celebrated toast was: “To 
the destruction of all law and order, and the unchain- 
ing of evil passions,” are unquestionably tickled to 
death with this crime, the minutest details of which 
they have surely received by radio in Hades, where they 
are now, with all their gang, probably bumping bumpers 
over it with Lucifer. 

The smartest lady I ever met told me not long ago, 
at the smartest dinner I ever attended, that she “simply 
adored Proudhon,” whom she considered “a perfectly 


24 


By Way of Introduction 


marvellous genius and the most progressive spirit of the 
nineteenth century.” An hour later, with her dernier 
cri skirts above her knees, she was progressively 
shimmy-shaking in a casino with her slick and sleek 
professional dancing partner, while her sex-equality, 
democratic husband was slowly but surely progressing 
out of sight under the table. 

As a single day’s issue of a great “Daily” involves 
the destruction of a thousand trees, I shall leave it to 
you, fair reader, to calculate how many have been 
recently razed to the ground to provide the world with 
the most intimate and sensational details of America’s 
latest and smartest divorce scandal. And now that 
every town, village, and mining camp has its “Smart 
Set,” the forestry department had better turn its atten- 
tion to the ever-increasing “Society News” and ‘Social 
Items” which are causing more havoc in our forests 
than fires. 

I once calculated that it cost at least one hundred 
and fifty thousand trees to instruct the masses in the 
life of Harry Thaw. 

One day last spring I fell asleep under a spreading 
oak, in the cool shade of a luxuriant grove, when sud- 
denly I was awakened, not by the full-throated song 
of a thrush, but by the diabolical shriek of a sawing 
machine. As it was at the time of Fatty Arbuckle’s 
trial, it occurred to me that probably in a few days all 
this fairyland of light, shadow, leaf, and branch would 
be transmuted into millions of newspaper pages describ- 
ing and illustrating every incident of Fatty’s career 
from the time of his birth. 

What a tremor of apprehension must have passed 
through the beautiful trees of France when the first 

25 





Mumbo Jumbo 


page photograph of Desiré Landru appeared in the 
French Press surrounded by ten of the wives whom 
he had butchered. And think how every forest must 
wail with alarm at the approach of Messrs. Hearst, 
Pulitzer, and Viscount Rothermere. 

I have often questioned what will happen when 
there is no longer a sufficient amount of timber to 
furnish newspaper pulp for the ever-increasing number 
of world-famous geniuses. I suppose the laws of nat- 
ural adjustment will then take care of such a dramatic 
situation, for when everyone becomes celebrated (which 
is not far off), those who are the most celebrated 
will undoubtedly endeavour to become nonentities in 
order to distinguish themselves from the rest, and 
“The Hall of Fame” will be superseded by “The Hall 
of Obscurity,” wherein the “Friends of Music” will 
be called upon to organize choral societies to chant: 


“How stupid to be somebody! 

How public, like a frog, 

To croak your name the livelong day, 
To an admiring mob.” 


For those who prefer forests to newspapers, it must 
be extremely distressing to see their beloved trees rap- 
idly disappearing into machine pulp to be transmuted 
into untold millions of tons of chronicled lies, gossip, 
scandal, criminality, pole-cat politics, self-exploitation, 
charlatanism, baseball, sport, social items, nostrums, 
and artful advertisements,” for the general enlighten- 


1“The freedom of the press may be regarded as a permission 
to sell poison—poison for the heart and the mind. There is no 
idea so foolish, but that it cannot be put into the heads of the 
ignorant and incapable multitude.”—ScHopeNHAUER. 


26 





By Way of Introduction 





ment and education of the masses, who seem to absorb 
with amazing facility such carefully prepared instruc- 
tion and uplift, calculated to warm the cockles of their 
hearts with sensations of progress, civilization, and 
superiority. 

I am convinced that Luis de Gongora himself could 
not have equalled Miss Neysa McMein’s dainty rhap- 
sody over Carpentier (the most newspapered and mag- 
azined “he-man” of the twentieth century, except per- 
haps Charlie Chaplin, Maréchal Foch, and Desiré Lan- 
dru),’ when “that beautiful person” appeared before 
her in a “wonder white bathroby thing with curious 
Javanese figures. Angelo would have fainted with joy 
at the beauty of his profile. . . . His imaginative sensi- 
tive hands, with beautiful oval nails . . . might have 


1 The following are extracts from columns which appeared in 
the press, a year after Landru’s execution: “Paris is to own 
Landru’s stove. The notorious cookery stove in which Landru 
roasted his numerous wives, was sold by auction to-day for 4,200 . 
francs, after brisk bidding. Candidates even wrote from the 
Netherlands offering large sums, and for the hour during which 
the stove was on view, it was photographed from every possible 
‘point of view by countless operators with cameras. All objects 
directly recalling the crimes committed at the lone house at 
Gambais were in great demand. These included locks of hair 
belonging to the unfortunate women whom Landru despoiled and 
murdered, articles of female attire, combs, etc. Landru’s seal 
with his initials fetched 400 francs. The stove was put up at 
500 francs; bidders ran up the figures rapidly to 4,000 francs. 
On the other hand, the shabby little purse which he had in his 
pocket when arrested made only 35 francs, which seems cheap 
for so personal a souvenir of a historic character.” 

It is doubtful, in this chaos of decadence, if the stove which 
warmed our glorious Marshal Foch who led ten million troops 
to victory, will ever reach such a figure. 

Two weeks later: “Landru’s kitchen stove has been resold to 
an Italian collector in Turin for 30,000 francs.” O tempora! 


O mores! 
27 


Mumbo Jumbo 


belonged to anyone from Napoleon to Whistler! And 
his legs!!” etc., etc. 

This is but a feather of ecstasy from tons and tons 
of similar panegyrics. But let us not overlook our 
pacifist, socialist, and ostrich-like sentimentalist, Mr. 
Bernard Shaw, who, after comparing Carpentier to 
Charles the Twelfth, dramatically exclaims at the ring- 
side, from the vantage of a ten-pound seat: “Genius 
could not be more unmistakable!’ Would Carpentier 
say as much of Shaw? I wonder! I believe the author 
who etherialized psychothenic maudlinism in Pelleas 
and Mélisande even out-pointed Shaw in Carpentierism. 

Undoubtedly Cachin’s acolyte, Anatole France, 
would have surpassed the above transvaluists in super- 
lative appreciation of his prize-ring compatriot, had 
he not been absorbed in worship before the shrine of 
Bolshevism, where he was heard to exclaim, with the 
Nobel Prize in his pocket: “I adore Lenin, because 
he works for the good of humanity.” And this from 
Anatole, who, with jewelled pen, and surrounded by 
priceless works of art, consecrates in the perfumed 
precincts of the Avenue du Bois his life to proving that 
humanity is not worth working for. 

I fail, however, to understand why so many of our 
modern altruistic Progressives, who have apparently 
advanced beyond normalcy, should prefer the “All 
Lowest” to the “All Highest,” not only in religion and 
statecraft, but in art and all other crafts as well.’ 


1“T do hope the reign of benevolence is over; until that event 
occurs, I am sure the reign of God will be impossible,” declared 
Henry James, Sen., over sixty years ago. What would he have 
said to the benevolent reign of Bolshevism? 


28 


By Way of Introduction 


Personally, as I find that art, like honey, only attains 
perfection under religious and monarchical institu- 
tions, I, like the bees, fundamentally believe not only in 
the divine right of King and Queen, but in the divine 
right of Pope, Caliph, and artist too, which, after all, 
is purely and simply a normal biological belief in 
normal biological rights. As every normal man by 
nature and instinct is a monarchist, it stands to reason 
that the democratic doctrine has been foisted upon him 
by energetic, mesmeric, unscrupulous bell-wethers, who 
are immune from pity and ever ready to perpetrate 
the most contemptible trick in order to gratify their 
personal vanity, and obtain, through flattery and mob- 
sycophancy, control of the mass. 

It is as unnatural and uninstinctive to have a mob- 
elected President as it would be for a hive to have a 
president bee. Let us hope that the bees will not con- 
tract the malady of our epoch and substitute democ- 
racy for monarchy; for in such an event we may expect 
from them tabloids of adulterated saccharine instead 
of nectar from the flowers of the field. 

I can think of nothing more satanically monotonous 
and evilly dismal than a world without class distinc- 
tions and populated with communal processional human 
caterpillars, even were they all uniformly glossy, chic, 
smart and “spiffy”; for I consider that the prin- 
cipal purpose of civilization is to create not only class 
distinction, but solid class barriers, in order to give the 
humans inspiring and invigorating desires and possi- 
bilities of peeping and, when ability permits, of jump- 
ing from one enclosure into another. They are thereby 
supplied with emotions of romance, hope, exaltation, 


29 





Mumbo Jumbo 





mystery, picturesqueness, respect, awe, reverence, and 
all the other qualities and sensations based on social 
differences which are fundamentally essential to the 
happiness, amusement and mental health of humanity; 
and without which any society will in time degenerate 
into dullness, viciousness, brutality and chaos.’ 

The stylized, solicitous family butler, who, alas! is 
rapidly disappearing, is one of the few remaining sym- 
bols of civilization, and unless we are at least able to 
retain him, it will not be long before we will be waiting 
on ourselves in the jungle, for without him and his 
traditional mutton-chop whiskers or smooth-shaven 
face—an insignia of service of which every honest 
servant is proud—there can be no art or culture. I 
know of a charming Virginian family living in Nice 
who fully appreciate this fact; and I have met few 
who are doing more to uphold the traditions of true 
civilization than is their faithful, aged butler, Enrico. 

If French sociologists, political economists and min- 
isters of fine arts would only realize the enormous 
importance, even from a purely commercial point of 
view, of preserving the Dundreary whiskers of their 
obsequious (in the best sense of the word) maitres 
d@’hétel, they would devote more attention to their cul- 
ture and growth and less attention to the coif of such 


1“The monarchical form of government is natural to man. 
Even the solar system is monarchical. A republic is as un- 
natural as it is unfavourable to the higher intellectual life and 
the arts and sciences. . . . There is always a numerous host 
of the stupid and the weak, and in a republican constitution it 
is easy for them to suppress and exclude the men of ability, 
so that they may not be outflanked by them. ... In a monarchy, 
talent and intelligence receive a natural advocacy and support 
from above.”—ScHOPENHAUER. 


30 





By Way of Introduction 





unprepossessing-looking “comrades” as Cachin, Lon- 
guet, Herriot and toute leur bande. 

Personally, I would infinitely prefer to wear flam- 
boyant Dundrearies and serve others than live in a 
community where all service was taboo. I would even 
sooner choose to be born in Uncle Tom’s cabin (In 
reality, Uncle Toms,* Aunt Elizas, Sambos, pickanin- 
nies and mammies were far happier in the aristocratic 
F.F.V. days of My Old Kentucky Home and Aunt 
Dinah’s Quilting Party than in these days of Yow’re 
some Cutie and you’ve got me vamped) than live in a 
state where liberty, equality and fraternity were reali- 
ties and not pure illusions, as they are and always will 
be.” For with our present mental equipment, which 
for many thousands of years has certainly not 
improved, I can think of no greater moral and physical 
bondage than the Utopia conceived of by our modern 
Utopians. 

I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that 
butletorial side-whiskers are of much greater impor- 
tance—for the moment, at any rate—to the safeguard- 
ing of European civilization than is the Luxembourg 
Museum, which is rapidly becoming proletculturized, 
or the august assembly of the Académie Francaise, 
where Demos has already begun to “‘butt in.” 


1 When Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was a New England senti- 
mentalist, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she had never been farther 
south than Cincinnati, and consequently, like most of the May- 
flowering Yankees of her day (and since her day as well), was 
entirely ignorant of the refined, chivalrous, generous, happy civ- 
ilization of the South. 

2“The strengthening and elevation of the human race always 
involves the existence of slaves.” ——-NIETZSCHE. 


31 





Mumbo Jumbo 





Although the word democracy is the largest, ugliest 
and most grotesquely ornate receptacle of salivary 
vulgarity, mawkishness and hypocrisy in the diction- 
ary, there are comparatively few men of to-day who 
would not with a cringing gesture of mob-servility hold 
it to their lips and drink deep from it in order to 
quench their thirst for popularity with the mass, which 
democrats despise in proportion to their elevation 
above it. As the moral health, entertainment and hap- 
piness of the proletariat is entirely dependent upon 
the moral health and happiness of a limited aristocratic 
governing cast, it necessarily follows that the prole- 
tariat is at present far from being happy, since it finds 
itself led by riffraff arrivists, high priests of vulgarity, 
machine-power larrikins, smug, sentimental, pharisaic 
bourgeois, overfed idealists and scientific fanatics. 

Blustering proselytizing glorification of mediocrity 
is always significant of decadence, and consequently it 
is not surprising to find, in this age of “‘who’s who?”— 
when every Tom in business, and every Dick in politics, 
and every Harry in sport, art and philanthropy, has 
his busy-buzzy Boswell—that the life of Lewis Carroll, 
our modern La Fontaine, and one of the most distin- 
guished, whimsical and poetical philosophers of all 
time and of all languages, has been omitted from the 
Encyclopedia Britannica; * wherein his contemporaries, 
Messrs. Hill, Gould, “Boss” Croker, Carnegie, and 


Company, and innumerable other geniuses of shop, 


1J have since discovered the life and light of the great poet 
Lewis Carroll (a pseudonym) hidden in the Encyclopedia Bri- 
tannica under the bushel of a mathematician named Charles 
Lutwidge Dodgson. 


32 


By Way of Introduction 


trade and opportunism, may be found basking under 
columns of immortal academic sunlight. No doubt the 
Encyclopedia Britannica, published in one of the most 
ancient seats of learning, considered that Carroll could 
immortalize himself, without their assistance. Think, 
O Charlie Chaplin, of the space that these immortal- 
izers have probably already set aside for you, Mrs. 
Castle, Carpentier and the “The World’s Sweetheart.” 

Little did it occur to Huysmans on presenting Mon- 
sieur des Esseintes, the most precious of exsthetes, to 
the Paris public that some day Dr. Marston T. Bogart, 
military beau and professor of organic chemistry at 
Columbia University, would be delivering lectures on 
‘perfumed preludes and scented symphonies, composed 
from a ‘scale’ of odours”; and gallantly tossing to the 
lovely “‘New-Yorkaises” “perfumed musical bouquets 
based on ‘sol,’ sol, pergolair; sol, pois de senteur; re, 
violet; fa, tuberose; sol, orange flowers; si, surone.” 

No one but a scientist would have taken Monsieur 
des Esseintes with such olfactory earnestness! 

But apropos of laboratorial bouquets of scientific 
music, I know of another scientist who, by the injection 
of various fluids, finally succeeded in making a hen 
crow, which achievement was proclaimed by the Press 
as one of the greatest triumphs of the century, although 
I, for one, think it the kind of “dirty trick” which any 
mischievous child would enjoy playing on a dutiful, 
unsuspecting rooster. It is even possible that the 
transformation of the sexes may take place in America 
without the aid of science, judging from the elongation 
and flattening of the female form and the shortening of 


30 


Mumbo Jumbo 


the male leg and the abnormal development of his 
posterior. 

The following Bill which has been presented in the 
Senate in the state of Georgia is also symptomatic of 
sex transformation. “It is a Bill designed to prevent 
any man from slipping away from home without inform- 
ing his wife whither he is going and obtaining her 
consent.” And in Chicago a poor devil of a husband 
has been recently forbidden by the court from “‘visiting, 
seeing, talking to or riding with any woman except his 
wife.” From early childhood I have foreseen it—the 
American inverted harem. We may soon expect to see 
our Gibson men veiled and cloistered like the Turkish 
ladies. I only hope, when my final bed-time comes, 
that I shall not be seized by a band of ruthless fanati- 
cal brigands, who, by means of a monkey gland, or 
the fluid of a bottle-nosed chimera’s dorsal fin, or 
some other vicious scientific artifice concocted to turn 
me into a perfect young lady, will prevent me from 
accomplishing my sacred right of creeping back like a 
weary little child, after a hard day’s play, into the 
womb of Mother Earth—the transvaluing mother of 
all values. 

But we must not wander too far afield, especially 
in these days when literature, like food, has been com- 
pressed by science into magazine digests of tabloids, 
capsules and extracts. It is nevertheless a curious 
fact that science, while giving us every conceivable kind 
of time-saving device, is robbing us of all our time for 
the real worth-while enjoyments of life, which, as the 
Divine Autocrat has decreed, are not only purely unsci- 
entific, but also entirely undemocratic. This would 


34 





By Way of Introduction 


account, I imagine, for the fatuous, self-satisfied, 
aggressive and almost alarmingly vulgar expression of 
our democratized artists, philosophers and scientists,’ 
who, having lost their imagination, and consequently 
their capacity for true enjoyment, take infinite pains 
to complicate the simplest and most obvious facts of 
nature with highfalutin phrases and mathematical 
symbols. And this abracadabra they then serve up 
to their brother bourgeois, whose egotism is always 
tickled by gibberosity, grandsillyquence and scientific 
mystification, believing this jargon to be expressive of 
‘““progress”—a word with which his tongue is thickly 
coated, and of which he considers himself a divinely 
appointed guardian. 

What bourgeois would not choose to have himself 
transported by aeroplane, or wafted by a varnished 
three-legged department-store Ouija board into a 
heavenly kingdom of what he calls spiritualistic science, 
rather than be borne like a little child, on wings of 
faith, imagination and mystical adoration of nature, 
into the realms of God, where science, sex-equality and 
democracy enter not—thank God! 

We have always suspected that the good, industrious, 
utilitarian burgher prefers with heart, sight and nose 
the glint of varnish and odour of petrol to sun-lit fields 
and aroma of flowers. 

I am even expecting soon to see gasoline cans labelled 

1“The greatest discoverer,’ wrote Kant, “in the sphere of 
science differs only in degree from the ordinary man; the genius, 
on the other hand, differs specifically.” This would explain why 
the good bourgeois instinctively loves the scientist and mistrusts 


and even hates the genius, unless he is able to exploit him either 
socially or monetarily. 


35 





Mumbo Jumbo 


“Forbidden Fruit,” ‘“Love’s Awakening,” ‘Circe,’ 
‘Scientific Kisses,” “Strange Flower,” etc., and to be 
driven by cultured chauffeurs with monogramed hand- 
kerchiefs of the sheerest linen, reeking with the perfume 
of their favourite petroleum. 

It is a lucky thing that the Kaiser did not realize 
to what extent socially apprehensive America had be- 
come obsessed and dazed with the complexities and 
obfuscating subtleties of social etiquette, otherwise he 
might have checked the victorious charge of the Amer- 
ican troops at Chateau Thierry—who were fighting to 
make the world safe for democracy—by hurling at 
them through magnaphones such perplexing and embar- 
rassing questions as: “Is it correct to eat asparagus 
with your fingers?” ‘Should the napkin be entirely 
unfolded or should the centre crease be allowed to 
remain?” ‘Who enters the tramcar first, the gentle- 
man or the lady?” ‘How may an elegant confident 
poise be developed in cultured society?” ‘Should a 
femme du monde peel a banana in public?” 

How thrilled must be the urbanites and commuters 
to hear that they will soon be able to “listen in” by 
means of a handy aluminium stentorphone with germ- 
proof receiver and mouthpiece, and hear the very latest 
news and gossip about those who have “‘passed over.” 
Ever since Sir Oliver Lodge was asked by his departed 
son Raymond for a Ford car and a large cigar, the 
progressive bourgeois has been pursuing occult scien- 
_tists with entreaties to provide him with a device 
through which he might receive similar ethereal mes- 
sages; for only a celestial scientist like Sir Oliver 
36 


By Way of Introduction 


could be expected to communicate with spirits without 
the help of a patented machine. 

In spite of Einstein to right of us, Einstein to left 
of us, Einstein in front of us, I, nevertheless, have suc- 
ceeded for the past months in keeping him out of my 
subconscious mind, for once bill-boarded, cinemato- 
graphed, phonographed, magazined and newspapered 
into it, I know from experience how extremely difficult 
it might be to get him out. A short time ago I was 
seriously disquieted by Jean Cocteau, Lady Astor, 
Dempsey, Mrs. Asquith, John Wanamaker the poet 
of dry goods, Mademoiselle Lenglen, Clare Sheridan 
and Otto Kahn, who had so successfully advertised 
their way into my poor brain that I almost despaired 
of being able to dislodge them. For over two weeks 
they haunted my dreams, and not only monopolized 
all conversation, but drove away my household gods. 
Of Bernard Shaw, and Heinz, the genius of “fifty-seven 
varieties,” I have never been able to rid myself, and 
as for Mrs. Stetson, and Mr. Carter of liver-pill fame, 
they have for years been dashing through my night- 
mares, mounted on “Bull Durham” and brandishing 
bottles of ‘“Campbell’s Tomato Soup,” which, as the 
world knows, is considered most delectable by Sir 
Thomas Lipton, Mrs. Pankhurst, the Countess of War- 
wick, Lord Northcliffe’s famous chauffeur, and a legion 
of other celebrities. 

Like the scholastics of the Middle Ages, who medi- 
tated over how many angels could be stood on the point 
of a needle, I now find myself speculating as to how 
many proletarians and Palace-Hotel democrats have 
been stood upside down on the point of Einstein’s 


37 


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theory. It is only recently I discovered that Einstein 
is a scientist advertising “Relativity” which everyone 
seems to comprehend except myself. Even my old 
cook told me the other day that relativity was the 
basis of modern art, and that I was unquestionably 
taller in the salon than I was in her kitchen. This 
must be true, as it sounds so scientific. ‘EKinstein’s 
theory”! Here he is again, covering an entire page in 
the daily Press, and below the flaming letters of his 
name you are asked: “Can you talk about Einstein’s 
theory intelligently?” You are then informed that 
“The Encyclopedia Americana will put the knowledge 
of the world at your elbow.” What an appalling idea! 
especially for the few of us left who, realizing that we 
know absolutely nothing, take our divine ignorance 
with holy seriousness. 

Behold another full-page advertisement of ‘Einstein 
for Children.” We will probably soon have patented 
Einstein nipples, so that infants will be able to sub- 
jectively suck in his theory with scientifically prepared 
milk. As the last war was fought to make the world 
safe for Democracy, the world in the next war will 
probably be made safe for Relativity, free-verse and 
istism art. ‘The amazingly gifted E. E. Cummings— 
one of a countless drove of modern poetical geniuses— 
who Has lately honoured Broom with his exquisite 
esoteric “Three United States Sonnets,” would, with- 
out doubt, consider such a war unnecessary, for you 
will see in the following, one of the supreme three, that 
he fancies the world, or the U.S.A. at all events, 
already entirely safe for him. 

By jingo! it looks as if Broom has stolen a march 
38 





By Way of Introduction 





over The Nation, The Masses, The New Republic, The 
New Marx Snobian, The Ladies’ Home Bolshevist, and 
last, but very far from being least, The Police Gazette, 
which has a frank naturalness and genuine simplicity 
rarely to be found in the just-mentioned smart weeklies. 
I trust that it is still going on, although I have not 
seen it since the days when my old Irish nurse was a 
fervent subscriber to it. 

But hark to E. E. Cummings, the bard of Manhat- 
tan, and judge for yourself. Personally I find that 
he has ascended to greater heights in Super-Pullman- 
Palace * democracy than Sandburg, Cendras, Wyndam 
Lewis, de Bosschere, Joyce, or even the famous Bellock 
Stardale, who is now considered in Europe, by Rotun- 
dians and Ritzonians, to be far greater than either 
Shakespeare or Goethe. 


1The Pullman-Palace Car, which permits the good democrat 
to travel not only “first-class” but “super-first-class” with a clear 
conscience, is one of the most ingenuous practices of democratic 
hypocrisy. 

A Labour leader and assiduous reader of The New Republic, 
The Masses and The Nation, once told me, while lounging in the 
upholstered armchair of a “Pullman-Palace Car,” that he “would 
rather die than live in a rotten, degenerate country where ‘first- 
class’ was tolerated.” 

Hitched on to the end of our train at the time was one of 
democracy’s innumerable private cars, in which were a “Hot- 
Stuff” lover of the plain people with his wife, who was a “Regular 
Guy” and “Jazz Queen,” their “Some Kid” of a Socialist daughter, 
clad in “knickers,” communistic maids and valets, and an aristo- 
cratic dog. 

I am all for “first-class” and private cars, but not for having 
“Hot-Stuffs,” “Regular Guys” and Communists in them! 

As I am not a democrat, I do not object to being with the 
public in public, but I do object to being with the public in 
private. 


39 


Mumbo Jumbo 


I might note in passing that, save in dress, Rotun- 
dians, Greenwich Villagers and Ritzonians are curiously 
alike in manners, habits, thoughts and ambitions. But 


—Hark!! 


III 


by god i want above fourteenth 

fifth’s deep purring biceps, the mystic screech 
of Broadway, the trivial stink of rich 

frail firm asinine life 


(i pant 
for what’s below. the singer. Wall. 1 want 
the perpendicular lips the insane teeth 
the vertical grin 


give me the Square in spring. 
the little barbarous Greenwich perfumed fake 
And most, the futile fooling labyrinth 
where noisy colours stroll . . . and the Baboon 
sniggering insipidities while. i sit, sipping 
singular anisettes as. One opaque 
big girl jiggles thickly hips to the canoun 
but Hassan chuckles seeing the Greeks breathe) 


No one but an ultra-select Palace-Hotel democrat, 
‘*jazz-lizard,” sex-equalitarian, mob-idolater and pro- 
gressive machine idealist could possibly have had such 
an inspiration. 

“This sort of thing knocks literature into a cocked 
hat,” writes John Dos Passos in his panegyric on the 
Olympian genius of E. E. Cummings. 

40 





By Way of Introduction 


In a future number of The Dial we will surely see 
E. E. crowning John! 

The following lines are more Parnassian laurel leaves 
gathered by John for the immortal wreath of E. E. :— 
“It is writing created in the ear and lips and jotted 
down. For accuracy in noting the halting cadences 
of talk and making music of it, I don’t know anything 
that comes up to these two passages.” Anyone with 
a sensitive ear will immediately detect in “these two 
passages” the lyrical acroamatical harmonies of E. E. 


“Buffalo Bill’s 
defunct 
who used to 
ride a watersmooth-silver 
stallion 
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat 
Jesus 
he was a handsome man 
and what i want to know is 
how do you like your blueeyed boy 
Mister Death.” 


One wonders how they do it! I see that Sandburg 
has gone and done it again all over pages and pages of 
that most fastidious, mundane and highly respectable 
New Republic, with, as he puts it, “the independence 
of a hog on ice.” The ever-increasing bevies of genius- 
ettes, composed of Gertrude Steins* and Marianne 
Moores, have no compunction whatsoever about doing 


1 Mrs. Stein, who has recently been overdone by Jo Davidson, 
underdone by Jacques Lipschitz, and done to death by Pablo 
Picasso has almost been outdone by Sherwood Anderson in the 
following Little Review of her super-genius: “She gives words 
an oddly new, intimate flavour, and at the same time makes 


41 





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it in public too. I know not what effect their divine 
affatus will eventually have upon them, but I am be- 
ginning to suspect what it was the Boojum read to 
the poor Snark-hunting Baker that caused him to 
“softly and suddenly vanish away.” 

But why meander on?—for has not the unbelief, 
hysterical self-exploitation, neurotic self-consciousness, 
pretentiousness, vulgarity, brutality, inane vanity, lack 
of respect, loss of dignity and tradition, and falsifica- 
tion of all human values of our epoch, been expressed 
unwittingly but in the most inimitable fashion by our 
Barnumized Mr. Shaw in his bill-boarded appreciation 
of Shakespeare, which, by the way, I find amazingly 
illustrative of La Fontaine’s fable of The Rat and the 
Elephant? 'This fable I always thought rather ex- 
travagant, until I came across the following lines by 
England’s self-exploiting self-exporter, but now I feel 
that La Fontaine might have even substituted gnat 
for rat. ‘With the single exception of Homer,” de- 
clares Fabian George, “there is no eminent writer, not 
even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so utterly 


familiar words seem almost like strangers. ... For me the work of 
Gertrude Stein consists in a rebuilding, an entire new recasting 
of life, in the city of words.” Oh! Sherwood, Sherwood! How 
could you? 

The following is an extract from “A Portrait of Jo Davidson,” 
executed by Mrs. Stein in her “city of words”: “To be back, to 
attack back. Attack back. To be back to be back to attack 
back... . You know and I know, I know and you know, you 
know and I know, we know and they know, they know and we 
know, they know and I know, they know and they know you 
know and you know I know and I know,” I certainly do know 
Gertrude, and I furthermore know that you know, but it’s hard 
on the poor gullible chap who doesn’t know. Sherwood, Jacques, 
Jo, and Pablo all know, too, I’m sure. 


42 


By Way of Introduction 


as I despise Shakespeare—when I measure my mind 
against his. The intensity of my impatience with him 
occasionally reaches such a pitch that it would posi- 
tively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones 
at him.” 

Of course La Fontaine’s rat was no fool, for by 
associating his name with the elephant he has managed 
to keep himself in the public eye for two centuries. 

The public eye, to be sure, particularly at present, 
is not the most desirable place to find oneself in, for 
every possible species of rodentia has, of recent years, 
succeeded in gnawing its way into it. Who knows! 
perhaps it may be my destiny to be pushed some day 
into this public eye of fame by friend and foe and left 
there to suffocate in the limelight, among a howling 
mob of celebrities. 

A short time ago a musical “genius” was pointed 
out to me who had just popped into fame for having 
declared that Wagner was merely opéra bouffe. And 
I know of another celebrity who, from fear of sink- 
ing into oblivion, suddenly began to squirt “‘arty” de- 
preciation over Leonardo da Vinci. 

I am fully aware, however, of having done a consid- 
erable amount of squirting myself, but only on those 
who would prefer to be squirted on, rather than be left 
unnoticed. 

But while we are on the subject of rats, gnats and 
elephants, listen to America’s “New Order of Critical 
Values” by ten of her most “celebrated authorities,” 
who, “with a view of covering the whole field of life 
and thought,” have compiled in the April Patrician 
the following chart according to their “scheme of 


43 


Mumbo Jumbo 


things.” The names are marked on a scale ranging 
between plus 25 and minus 25. The ten highest are: 
Shakespeare and Bach, each 22; Goethe, Anatole 
France, Beethoven and Nietzsche, 19; Wagner, 18; 
Leonardo da Vinci and Charlie Chaplin, 17; Flaubert, 
Aristotle, Plato, George Washington, Voltaire, 16; 
Walt Whitman, 15. These patrician authorities, there- 
fore, allot ninth place among the greatest geniuses in 
the world’s history to Charlie Chaplin. Our village 
socialist and uplifter, who has introduced the cinema 
and dancing “salon” to our peaceful fishing folk, would 
probably give Charlie, who is, according to Mr. Waldo 
Frank, not only “our most authentic dramatic figure,” 
but “our sweetest playboy,” first place, particularly 
after having seen him last night, in a film, put his 
muddy boots on a lady’s lap and then get idiotically 
and combatively drunk for the educational amusement 
and edification of our village children. In the middle 
of the performance a peasant arose with great dignity 
and left the hall, with his wife and grandchildren, for, 
being illiterate and of the old school, he was unable to 
admire in Charlie Chaplin what Jean Cocteau would 
call the realism of Shakespeare and Moliére. 

In the same article Cocteau, with true Dadaist cour: 
age, asks: “Shall I dare” (and of course he does; they 
all do) “to add that it is the realism of the great, of 
the tender Charlie Chaplin?” “I hope,” continues 
poetasting Jean, “that this phrase may reach him and 
bring him the homage of our whole generation.” Shall 
I now dare to add still more realism to the tender 
realism of our Yankee-doodlized, twinkling French 
bardlet? 

44, 





By Way of Introduction 





“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, 
I know full well what you’re at! 
Up above the world you fly, 
Like a tea-tray in the sky. 
Twinkle, twinkle”’— 


But to continue with our modern Patrician authori- 
ties : 

Among the two hundred and two names chosen from 
Plato to the present day are Babe Ruth, Mary Pick- 
ford, Carpentier, Irving Berlin, Fanny Brice, Herbert 
Croly, Mademoiselle Lenglen, Francis Hackett, Elsie 
Ferguson, Billy Sunday, Douglas Fairbanks, Lillian 
Gish, Clare Sheridan, Dempsey, Elinor Glyn, Al Jolson, 
H. L. Mencken, and others of like genius. 

Probably Dr. G. V. Lapogue, a world-famous scien- 
tist, had the above American Olympians in mind when 
he opened his address before the Eugenics Congress in 
New York with the following prophetic exhortation :— 
“America, I declare solemnly that it depends on you to 
save civilization and produce a race of demi-gods.” 
Let us hope, on the contrary, that civilization, or what 
there is left of it, will dissuade America from under- 
taking any such enterprise. I only fear that Dr. 
Lapogue and his scientific associates of the Eugenics 
Congress, who expect, no doubt, to produce by scien- 
tific methods this race of demi-gods in factories and 
laboratories, have become far too solemn to be saved, 
or otherwise I would suggest having them all stretched 
out, on a star-lit night, with their faces upturned to 
the heavens, in order to cure them for ever of taking 
themselves too solemnly. 


45 


Mumbo Jumbo 


In fact, as the vast majority of human ills arise from 
taking ourselves too solemnly, I can think of no better 
cure for scientific megalomaniacs, and for the ever- 
increasing number of fatuous burghers and fatted pro- 
letarians who are secretly pining and plotting to be- 
come supermen, than a few minutes of star-gazing every 
night before bed-time. It is, of course, natural that 
such a simple, inexpensive cure would not meet with 
the approval of bone-setters, and those who are de- 
riving flourishing incomes from nostrums and thermal 
resorts. Affluent neurologists and psychiatrists would 
obviously consider such an idea puerile and entirely 
absurd. I continue, nevertheless, to take this cure 
every star-lit night, in spite of the fact that the stars 
have the most drastic effect on Dr. William Carlos 
Williams, who, we are told by Alfred Kreymborg, is 
one of the greatest of modern poets, and “deserves a 
garland, with which he would hang you.” It is hardly 
necessary to add that the Doctor dedicated the follow- 
ing scientific effusion to Alfred, his faithful Boswell :— 


THE COLD NIGHT 


It is cold. The white moon 

is up among her scattered stars— 
like the bare thighs of 

the Police Sergeant’s wife—among 
her five children. . 


If I could only be present at a meeting, intra parietes, 
between Dr. G. V. Lapogue, Dr. William Carlos Wil- 
liams, Dr. Oliver Lodge and Dr. Marston T. Bogart! 
Ah! but that is too much to expect! 

46 





By Way of Introduction 





Had Dr. William Carlos Williams whispered in a fit 
of fine scientific frenzy, on a hot night, in the ear of the 
Police Sergeant’s wife that her bare thighs reminded 
him of the white moon among her scattered stars, it 
would have been his private business, but when the 
Doctor goes on to tell us, on a cold night, in cold print 
and in cold calculation, that he has received a 


“new answer out of the depths of 
my male belly: In April... 
In April I shall see again—In April! 
the round and perfect thighs 
of the Police Sergeant’s wife 
perfect still after many babies. 
Oya!” 


—it then becomes not only our business, but even, 
methinks, the business of the police. If we expect the 
police to protect our wives against thugs and Bolshe- 
vists, it behoves us, I consider, to protect their wives 
against lusty imagists like Dr. Williams. 

But to give you some idea of the place occupied by 
the Doctor in American letters, I shall quote the fol- 
lowing appreciations of another one of his esoteric 
volumes entitled Kora in Hell :—‘‘Surely a unique book! 
These phrases stand on their feet or sit on their bot- 
toms well outside the family circle,” says The Dial. 
And again: “The most original book of the year,” 
writes The Boston Transcript. I sincerely trust that 
the devil, the Doctor and the Transcript will manage 
to keep “Kora in Hell,” and that T'he Dial will continue 
to see that all those phrases remain seated on their 
bottoms well outside my family circle. But we must 


AT 


Mumbo Jumbo 


not overlook William Marion Reedy, the Bellman of the 
Crew of imagists, who continues to tingle his bell in 
praise of the Doctor: “A hard, straight, bitter jave- 
lin . . . but there is a tang of very old sherry in hin, 
to mellow the irony. As you read him you begin to 
realize how little poetry—or prose—depends on defini- 
tions, or precedents, or forms.” Bravo William Marion 


Reedy! 


“So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply 
‘They are merely conventional signs!’ ” 


I don’t know about the old sherry, but there is cer- 
tainly more than a tang of something very, very old 
indeed in the Doctor and his admirers. The Doctor 
would have us fully appreciate this fact, as he devotes 
an entire page of eight by five inches to a poem entitled 
“Spring,” comprising in all the two following lines :— 


*“O my grey hairs! 
You are truly white as plum blossoms.” 


On page 51 in the same volume we find another poem 
called “Lines,” of which there are exactly eight words 
on an otherwise empty page: 


‘Leaves are greygreen, 
the glass broken, bright green.” 


You see we are not so far away, after all, from 


“ ‘Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and 
capes, 

But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank’ 

48 





By Way of Introduction 


(So the crew would protest) “that’s he’s brought us the 
best, 
A perfect and absolute blank.’ ” 


It is not that I object to an empty page, nor an 
empty brain, but I do object to an empty heart. In 
fact, one of the greatest tragedies to me in life is that 
when the heart is surcharged with pure emotion both 
page and brain are apt to remain a blank. 

I do not believe this, however, to be the case of the 
Doctor, who is very careful to tell us that he conceals 
his heart in his “male belly.”’* I do believe it, though, 
in the case of the poor, ignorant, inarticulate chap 
who, after gazing in silence for over an hour at the full 
moon, while tenderly holding the hand of his beloved 
“Maggy,” suddenly blurted out: “It looks like hell, 
don’t it?” 

He, at least, “struck one clear chord to reach the 
ears of God,” a chord which is never struck by those 
with empty hearts, even if their brains, pages and 
pockets are full. 

This has, indeed, been a long deviation, and much too 
long had it merely been a question of dragging in a 
pair of doctors; but as Dr. William Carlos Williams 
and Dr. G. V. Lapogue are, like E. E. Cummings, 
Anatoly Maryngoff, Carl Sandburg and the others, 
such characteristic cases of “Walt Whitmania,” I do 
not feel that I have allotted them too much space. 

This whitmania has now spread to the farthest cor- 


*In columns of attack against the author, the English Outlook 
refers to our Doctor as “that very individual living poet.” It 
would seem that the Outlook has concealed not only its heart but 
its intelligence as well in the same hiding place as the Doctor. 
Heavens, what an outlook! 


49 





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ners of the earth, and is not only making ravages in 
cities, suburbs and small towns, but even the rural class 
has become infected with it. 

My farmer’s wife asked me recently if I would not 
pass judgment on a book of verse written by her son. 
‘““He feels that he owes it to the public to have it pub- 
lished,” she said. As her son, a young man about 
twenty-five, in my employ, has already passed judg- 
ment on me for over a year by receiving exorbitant 
wages for doing practically nothing but write his book, 
I did not feel it incumbent upon me to sponsor its pub- 
lication, although I find it quite on a par with those of 
our most advertised modern bards or “word fellows,” 
as Mr. Sherwood Anderson affectionately calls them 
with Ohioan debonarity. But I shall let you judge for 
yourself : 


Carrots 


cesar crossed the alpes on the top of a buss 
with his hand on his belly 

remember xenophon and think of his belly 
and the glorious belly of h. g. wells 

and lenin’s belly and trotsky’s belly 
think of the bellies of salambo and sapho 
I shall think of my own belly 

your belly his belly her belly 

I have been wounded with pointed kisses 
they are too long and pink 

I dare not eat them 


0.g. 
(Norr.—You will observe that the only capitals in 


the poem are the three capital I’s.) 
50 


By Way of Introduction 





As our village, like yours, is naturally not without 
its uplifter and detective of genius, it will surely not 
be long before our farmer’s lad will be enrolled as an 
immortal; and then The Dial will be given another 
opportunity to tell its readers with what majesty 
“these phrases sit on their bottoms.” The Little 
Review will undoubtedly discover them to be “The most 
important book which has come from the imagists”’; 
and Poetry will again find its precious self strolling, 
as it did while reviewing one of Dr. Williams’ works, in 
‘a small garden induced to grow in unlikely surround- 
ings: on the whole so deep-rooted that its bloom should 
last a long time, so native that very likely meaner poets 
will come to pick what they can.” God forbid! for, 
with my family of farmer poets, I get practically noth- 
ing off my farm as it is. 

And now, most patient reader, I most humbly beg 
your forgiveness for having led you through highways 
and byways from “America’s new order of critical 
values” to my little farm in La Napoule. Let us re- 
turn to those “critical values.” 

Those who tied are: Martin Luther and Floyd Dell; 
Flo Ziegfeld and Frederick the Great; Lord Tennyson 
and Marilynn Miller. Other ratings are: Yvette Guil- 
bert, 11; Dante, 10; Mary Garden, 8; Joan of Arc, 3; 
Marie Jeritza, 7; George Eliot, 2; Dempsey, 6; Marshal 
Foch, 1; H. L. Mencken, 8; Wordsworth, 1; Ring 
Lardner, 7; Tennyson, 2; Ed. Wynn, 6; Rostand, 1. 

It is to be noted that the smart Mr. H. L. Mencken, 
co-editor of The Smart Set, votes five for himself, and 
gives zero to the following names :—Leonardo, Abélard, 
Marcus Aurelius, St. Francis, Racine, Shelley, Sopho- 

51 





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cles, Foch, Raphael, Praxiteles. For Ludendorf he 
votes 23.7 

As the ten august compilers of the above chart are 
the most conspicuous critics and editors of our most 
conspicuous newspapers and magazines, it allows one 
to realize to what altitudes the mass is being elevated! 

I shall now tack on my little evaluation of their 
transvaluations, which I find are pathetically silly, per- 
versely cynical, hysterically pretentious, priggishly 
grotesque, morbidly self-conscious, effetely insincere, 
clownishly self-exploiting, decadently flippant, neu- 
rotically vulgar, pathologically egotistical, invertedly 
snobbish, foppishly amoral, maliciously ungenerous, 
phantastically cheap, anemically insolent, mongrelly 
envious, and—commercially shrewd. 

It will probably be my lot to be accused of endeavour- 
ing to associate my name with “immortals,” but I feel 
that I have at least shown unusual modesty and dis- 
crimination in my selections. At all events I have 


1 This is not surprising, as he tells us, in a painfully undigested 
article which has recently been reviewed in The Literary Digest, 
that the strutting popinjay Frenchman is completely devoid of 
gallantry, and is a wholly incompetent soldier, panicky in defeat 
and hysterical in victory. And yet—you may not believe it—I 
feel certain that some day we will hear of our immortal H. L. 
strutting about in Paris and sporting the “red thread of honour” 
in his buttonhole, for having done the popular Washington- 
Lafayette “sleight of tongue” trick. 

Herr Mencken, however, becomes a trifle super-smart when 
in the same gastroxynsisian article he assures us that “it is hard 
to find a civilized American who is not full of secret regret that 
the Kaiser did not conquer the country—and secret hopes that 
the Japs will do it before he has to go to Hell!” It looks to 
me as if our “high priest of Uncle Sam’s young intellectuals” 
has already gone there. Requiescat in pace! 


52 


By Way of Introduction 


displayed more self-control than the sentimental Mr. 
Shaw, who, with a modern dirt-cheap spade of factory- 
made wit, would like to dig up Shakespeare and throw 
stones at him. This is, however, the kind of violence 
to be expected from a passivist, socialist and rampant 
sentimentalist. How differently, and with what amazing 
skill and grandiose tolerance, did Shakespeare dig up 
Shaws and Jack Cades, to dangle them with Elizabethan 
mirth and philosophical irony before the footlights of 
humanity. 

In the happiest and most normal epochs the roots 
and leaves of humanity toiled with contentment, and 
found fulfilment in seeing their efforts crowned by 
mystical flowers of art, abstract science, religion, aris- 
tocracy and chivalry; but for the last century the lower 
middle class and proletariat, poisoned and auto-intoxi- 
cated by false and undigested education, forced on them 
by self-exploiting culture-boosters, vainglorious ego- 
centric philanthropists, and professionally buoyant, 
soul-sucking uplifters, have been oozing their way, with 
socialistic egotism, malice and envy, out of leaf and 
root into the bloom, until they are now producing 
odourless, colourless, artificial flowers, standardized by 
commercial science, and laid out by sex-equality in in- 
terminable, monotonous, dismal rows. 

The canker of decadence is already at the heart of 
this sorry, uniform, Taylorized flower of our commer- 
cially scientific, levelling, power-machine civilization; 
just as it attacked in previous times the heart of the 
mystical rose when it had lost its force and power to 
exhale the aroma of beauty, culture, romance and imagi- 
nation demanded of it by root and leaf. 


53 





Mumbo Jumbo 


But the Great Gardener of infinite variety and in- 
finite inequality, who takes no note of man’s notion of 
good and evil, of justice and injustice, will come again 
with another springtime, to drive forth, as He did from 
Paradise, the enemy of life force—the only enemy He 
recognizes—the Scientific Satan of equality and iden- 
ticalism. 

And the old plants withered by bluff, pretentiousness, 
and comfort science, Christian Science, social and sex- 
equality science, and science of tears, laughter, art and 
commerce; and rotten to the root with vulgarity and 
democratic factory soot of fraud, imitation, similarity 
and seriality, will be uprooted, and in their place will 
spring up anew the fragrant, mystical, unscientific 
flower of the past in “Gardens bright with sinuous rills, 
where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree.” And 
where the factory was, another Kubla Khan will another 
‘stately pleasure dome decree.” And the democratic 
honk of the wild goose Ford, who declares that “history 
is all bunk,” will be hushed for centuries; and the voice 


of that sweet singer Israfel will again be heard in the 
land. 


Before my glass house (which, alas! is not even of 
plate-glass) is stoned by other dwellers under glass, I 
would like to suggest a “‘perfectly beautiful” unscien- 
tific plan; for it is tragically humorous to think that 
all the schemes which have thus far been devised for the 
salvaging of humanity have been conceived of by scien- 
tists who have consecrated their lives to the annihila- 
tion of it. This would not include, of course, those 
scientific gentlemen on the outside of the bull-ring, who 
54 


By Way of Introduction 


are always on hand to stuff up the poor old gored horse 
with medicated straw in order to send him back again 
into the arena of life. 

My plan is as follows. I propose that we immedi- 
ately begin to unmechanize, uninvent our way out of 
these scientific catacombs of unbelief, artificial pleasure, 
false happiness, machine idolatry and suffocating vul- 
garity into the sunlight of belief, full-hearted Eliza- 
bethan merriment, self-expression, vital refinement and 
true happiness which existed before the fatal moment 
when Watt, the super-democratic scientist, conceived 
of the diabolical thought of an automatic power- 
machine. 

We will start, therefore, by first suppressing radio, 
which has already had a most pernicious, degenerating, 
gossipy, scandal-mongering effect. (I ask you to ob- 
serve carefully the expressions of all those intimately 
connected with it.) The sinister submarine and unholy 
aeroplane will follow, with tittle-tattling telephone, de- 
moralizing, sub-ducating cinema, falsifying, cheapening 
phonograph, and all the other equalizing, vulgarizing, 
brutalizing contraptions. 

We will thus continue for, say a period of twenty-five 
years, until every form of power-machinery and every- 
thing connected with it, and dependent upon it, is ban- 
ished for all time from the world. 

In other words, I propose by a process of elimination 
to cure humanity in twenty-five years of the toxin 
inoculated into it one hundred and fifty years ago by 
Watt with his satanic invention, which has not only 
enslaved the human race, but corrupted and poisoned 
it to its very roots with the black pest of factory, 

55 





Mumbo Jumbo 


vulgarity * and Democracy, the three most infectious 
and deadly sins which have ever been conceived of by 
the scientific Prince of Darkness and equality against 
the God of Light, inequality and infinite variety. 

I would not have you think, patient reader, that this 
“perfectly beautiful” suggestion is made in a prosely- 
tizing spirit. Messianic exaltation was one of the many 
luxuries which disappeared with the last blush of my 
extreme youth. 

There is all the difference in the world between the 
reformer and him who would save his own skin. Star- 
gazing, to be sure, has led me to recognize that mine 
has merely an infinitesimal value, but the Almighty 
has, nevertheless, in His love of infinite variety, given 
me, and all the other microcosms, possibilities of pro- 
tecting our little selves by instilling into us the instinct 
of self-preservation. My above plan arises entirely 
from this instinct. 

It is not a question, therefore, of proselytizing ora- 
tory behind a desk on which is a glass of water for the 
parched lips of the would-be inspired uplifter, but 
rather the situation of one who finds himself confined 
in a malodorous room, with windows closed and blinds 
drawn. It becomes instinctive, for those who are forced 
to gasp for breath in such an atmosphere, to try, at 
least, to lift the blinds, open the windows, and let in 
air and sunshine, not for the purpose of converting or 


1 We have included vulgarity with factory and Democracy, as 
vulgarity is essentially in all of its manifestations a levelling 
force, and consequently a sin against life. But unfortunately 
he who is not a votary of it is to-day considered a pariah and 
ostracized from every society. 


56 





By Way of Introduction 





uplifting others, but purely and simply out of a sense 
of self-preservation. 

The shoal man, on the contrary, gasps for breath 
when he finds himself in sunlight and fresh air, for, un- 
like the flying-fish or the ceratodus—a rare genus of 
fish having lungs—he has been limited to gills which 
allow him to breathe freely only while swimming under 
the scum of bluff, bunkum and hypocrisy. 

If, however, he is not occasionally given light and 
air, he soon begins to secrete deadly poisons, which 
develop into contagious diseases, and finally break out 
into pests. 

The recent war gave some idea to what extent man 
has become degenerated by science and machinery. 
Europe sank to a greater depth of inhumanity and 
viciousness than ever before, simply because she had 
become more highly mechanized. Had the war con- 
tinued, however, Europe would have been surpassed in 
scientific horror by America, which is the most mech- 
anized, unspiritual country in the world, and conse- 
quently the most dangerous to true civilization.* 

I feel sure that unless we soon succeed in suppress- 
ing the blackest of all pests, the power-machine, and 
cleansing the atmosphere of its poisonous gases of 
democracy, it will not be long before humanity will be 
ground into inhumanity, and instead of having one 
rampagious old lady waving the red rag of Bolshevism 
and screaming out, “This is red and so am I!” as 


1“Steel and iron are of infinitely greater account in this 
commonwealth than flesh and blood.”—Dicxens. In all common- 
wealths, I think. The American Radiator Co., who advertises 
that “the Ideal Type A Boiler is more than human,” would most 
assuredly agree with Mr. Dickens. 


57 


Mumbo Jumbo 


Isadora Duncan recently did before a Boston audience, 
all of our old ladies will be doing it. 

Even if this fate does not overtake my generation, 
the thought of my children or their children being over- 
taken by it comes as a ghastly nightmare. 

Beelzebub, enthroned on his steam-roller of machine 
science and communism, is at our garden gate, with 
his ever-increasing hordes of disciples and dupes: 
necromancing mattoids, “‘arty” jukes, scientific hooli- 
gans, literary morons, mechanized submen, egocentric 
reformers, serialized snorting democrats, gold brick 
swamis, willy-nilly silly Fabians and Shavians, I.W.W. 
defectives, militant vulgarians, news-delirians, press- 
phobians, gutter and parlour socialists, apostate mud- 
dlemental Engelists, Tolstoyists, Russellists and 
Kropotkinists; beetle-browed mephitic syndicalists, 
Semitic Marxists, megalomaniacal internationalists, 
half-fool collectivists, paranoiac Bolshevists, manic- 
depressive Babouvists, Proudhonists, Bakuninists; 
processional caterpillar Saint-Simonists and Owenists, 
prohibitionists, mongrel environmentalists, baboon 
evolutionists, fetishized mechanomentalists, snide 
Cubists, sterile feeble-minded expressionists, buffoon 
Dadaists, monkey-hearted futurists, morosophists, 
commercial suggestionists, mass-educationalists, pro- 
fessional altruists, proletculturists, caponized lady-kin 
feminists, female cocka-lorumists, octopus monopolists, 
hoopoe psycho-analysts, fanatical idealists, fee-foxing 
psychiatrists, venal spiritualists, belching optimists and 
self-boosting philanthropists. 

The hour is at hand. . . . Let us rise out of this 
miasma of machinery and democracy and drive him 


58 





By Way of Introduction 


and his followers back into the black factory hell of 
equality and identicalism with a cross made in a joyful, 
aristocratic, free artisan age of the past, when art was 
an expression of faith. Nunc aut nunquam! * 

Although Doctor Emile Coué advertises in The New 
Republic and elsewhere that he has healed Lord Curzon 
and cured Countess Beatty, and that all America is 
beginning to repeat, “Day by day and in every way I 
am getting better and better,” I cannot help but feel 
that America, Europe, Lord Curzon, Lady Beatty, 
The New Republic and all of us are getting worse and 
worse. 

It even occurs to me on re-reading the above list that 
the world, with the possible exception of Henry Arthur 
Jones, Léon Daudet, Urbian Gohier, Miss M. G. Kil- 
breth, Mussolini and a few others—aincluding myself, 
of course—has already gone to the Devil. In these 
circumstances it is reassuring to know that civilization 
has always been wrecked or saved by a few. 

I, however, unlike Mr. Bellamy and all the other 
Utopian-dopians, am not for suppressing the Devil 
altogether, even were it possible; for a world without 
him would be a very smug, dull, inhuman place indeed, 
but a Utopian’ world without inequality and infinite 
variety would be inconceivably worse. 


1 Avanti Savoia! Avanti Mussolini! Avanti Fascisti! Come to 
our rescue! Bring us the light and might of your moral Risorgi- 
mento! Save us, St George! and thrust again your spear into 
the maw of the dragon, who to-day has reappeared from his 
slimy swamp, more horrible than ever, under the deadly scientific 
camouflage of the altruistic Judas-smiling Labour Leader. Eja, 
eja, eja Alala!! 

2“If it is Utopian schemes that are wanted, I say this: the 
only solution of the problem would be a despotism of the wise 


59 





Mumbo Jumbo 





To be capable of love, one must be capable of hate. 
To be capable of good, one must be at least capable of 
sin. To be able to love God and all of His works, one 
must be able to hate the Devil and most of his works. 
But to be able to hate the Devil, we must have him 
with us, if for no other reason than to keep us in good 
moral fighting trim, and prevent us from becoming 
utopianized, puritanical scribes and pharisees, with 
ready stones in our hands for Mary Magdalens and 
Prodigal Sons. 

What is so revolting about the unleashed passions of 
to-day is, that they arise, not from sincere hatred, but 
from the vicious suggestion of political serpents, senti- 
mentalists and cold-blooded mercenary scriveners, who 
are as incapable of true emotion as are our Mumbo- 
jumbo scientists, artists and their auto-intoxicated 
following. 

But we must not be too severe, for, in the circum- 
stances, it is a great wonder that humanity is not far 
worse than it is, considering that we are all suffering 
from the accumulated toxins of one hundred and fifty 
years of applied science and machinery. 

As I am considered by my progressive friends to be 
a reactionary mischief-maker, I can think of no more 
and the noble, of the true aristocracy and the genuine nobility, 
brought about by the method of generation—that is, by the 
marriage of the noblest men with the cleverest and most in- 
tellectual women.”—ScHOPEN HAUER. 

This would be indeed the only solution, but fortunately in- 
tellectual women have a peculiar weakness for wastrels and 
Lotharios, and an instinctive antagonism for noble-minded men, 
while the noblest men have rarely been attracted by intellectual 


women. I said fortunately, for I do not think that a human 
utopia was ever a part of the Divine programme. 


60 


By Way of Introduction 


appropriate way to cap the climax of this introductory 
ramble—or gambol on the green, as modern democratic 
burghers on the asphalt will probably dub it—and not 
disappoint them in their appreciation of me, than with 
the prayer of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the greatest of 
all mischief-makers. 

I have already referred to him as having headed the 
Encyclopedists, which is not altogether exact, as he, 
Voltaire and others were but contributors to the monu- 
mental work of Diderot and D’Alembert; but it was 
Rousseau who laid the corner-stone of the French 
Revolution. No man, however, would have been more 
disgusted and horrified by the results of his own teach- 
ings than Rousseau himself, for he was at least a human, 
warm-blooded maestro of mischief, unlike the cold- 
blooded, inhuman, mechanized illiterati of to-day. 

Of this much I am certain, that had Jean Jacques 
been living now, he would have been far more anti- 
republican than he ever was anti-monarchist, and in his 
famous denunciation of science would have included 
unholy democracy, which is the inevitable result of the 
automatic power-machine. 

“Almighty God, deliver us from the sciences and the 
pernicious arts of our fathers! Grant us ignorance, 
innocence and poverty once more as the only things 
which can bring happiness and which are of value in 
Thine eyes.” 

La Napouteg, 1922. 
AupEs-MarITIMES. 


61 





Mumbo Jumbo 





Characters 


In order of their Appearance 


Joun Brown 


et known as Mervyn, the 


world-famous painter. 


Mrs. Brown } . His mother. 


American Jew, of Kougelman & 
Company, world-famous art 
dealers of New York, Paris and 
London. Knight of the Legion 
of Honour. 


Isaac KouvuGeLtMAn 


American Jew, known as “J. R.’’; 
Nose EUR BERN OAR partner of Kougelman & Com- 
pany. Knight of the Legion of 

Honour. . 


Eten FLannican Old family servant to Mrs. Brown. 


A fifteenth-century Renaissance 
statue in wood, attributed by 
Van Rensselaer-Levineson to 


Della Quercia. 


American Jew; art booster for 
Kougelman & Company. 


Tue Hoty Virgin . 
Moses STEIN 


SAMUEL Van Rens- 


slums of New York, of Jewish 
SELAER-LEVINESON . 


parents. Commander of the 
Legion of Honour. 


Scion of old Knickerbocker fam- 

ily; celebrated art connoisseur 
and distinguished Ritzonian; liv- 
ing in Paris. Knight of the 
Legion of Honour. 


NorMAN DE PuystTer 


World-famous art critic and con- 
spicuous Ritzonian; born in the 
Van Loon 


62 





Characters 


World-famous society leader, in- 
| ternational patron of arts and 





sciences, celebrated littérateur, 
noted _ sociologist, | renowned 
beauty, conspicuous _ socialist, 
public !benefactor, world-famous 
organizer of art exhibitions and 
charity bazaars. Born in New 
York pawn-shop, of Jewish 
parents. Officer of the Legion 
of Honour. 


American multi-millionaire, world- 


Tue DUCHESS oF 
MANDELIEU 


famous financier, philanthropist 
and art collector. Grand Officer 
of the Legion of Honour, etc., etc. 


Ezra P. Packer . 


His wife; also world-famous and 
“of assured social position.” 
Knight of the Legion of Honour. 


Mrs. Ezra P. Packer { 
Their daughter; world-famous 
Press and Magazine belle, cele- 
brated sculptress, President of 
“The Friends of Art,’ Vice- 
President of “The Friends of 
Music,’ etc. Socialist, and 
popular leader of the young 
smart intellectual set. Knight 


of the Legion of Honour. 


Miss Patricia PAcKER 


Private secretary to Ezra P. 
Packer; with expectations of 
‘some day becoming world-famous. 


Oscar CapDMAN . 


Specialist in social celebrities, 
business, political and scientific 
geniuses and_ world - famous 
crooks. 


First NewspaPer Re- 
PORTER 


63 





Mumbo Jumbo 





Specialist in social celebrities, 
art, literary and musical geniuses 
and world-famous murderers. 


Srconp NeEwsPAPER 
REPORTER 


Specialist in social celebrities, 
stage and cinema royalty, sport 
geniuses and _ world--famous 
' divorce scandals. 


EE for her  histrionic 


Tutrp Newspaper Re- 
PORTER . 


talents in brilliant theatrical 
functions.” Treasurer of “The 
Society for Birth Control,” 
Honorary member of “The 
Friends of Vasectomy.” 


A DEBUTANTE 


A GENTLEMAN . . Unmarried and uncelebrated. 


Celebrated as husband of the 
divinely beautiful and erudite 
society leader, who is President 

RAILROAD PRESIDENT of “The Friends of Eugenics,” 

Vice-President of ““The Woman’s 
Socialist League,’ Founder of 
The New Mara Snobian. 


Celebrated as husband of “Patrick 
Odd.”’ Well-known clubman 
and inventor of the “Prohibition 


Cocktail.” 


+e as husband of ‘“‘Miss 


SporTSMAN 


Nora Ibsen.” Renowned for his 
game of golf. 


SupreME Court JUDGE 


Celebrated as the democratic 
father of the democratic Duchess 
of Westchester. 


SENATOR 


64 





Characters 


Celebrated society leader of the 

young married set, universally 

known as “Patrick Odd.” 
Patrick Opp . 





Dadaist poetess, Cubist painter, 
Futurist musician, fervent Bol- 
shevist, exotic jazzer, charity 
worker. Vice-President of “The 
Friends of Einstein.” 


Daughter of a world - famous 
yachtsman. Socialist and cele- 
brated “Society matron around 
whom revolves an _ unceasing 
world of gaiety.” President of 
“I Feed a Baby Society,” Secre- 
tary of “The Friends of Freud.” 


“Popular member of the most 
exclusive set,’ militant leader 
of “The Friends of Pugilism,” 


A Lapy . 


of the Suffragettes, President 
pe on a Hse N world-famous golf and_ tennis 
champion, universally known 
under her maiden name of 
“Miss Nora Ibsen.” 


Mayor of New York City. World- 
famous political genius, ardent 
feminist. 


His Honour Patrick 
Mu.tuican SwEENY 


Of a private Sanatorium near 


Heap Doctor . New York. 


Assistant doctor in same Sana- 


INTERNE . torium. 


65 


Mumbo Jumbo 


Lunatic in same Sanatorium, who 
Henry Mu.ier. ef thinks himself the world-famous 
“Loyal Painless Thompson.” 


Also a lunatic in same Sanatorium, 
Rev. SIMPpKIN-SANDS . who thinks himself the world- 


famous Mr. Wanamaker. 


torium, who thinks himself 
himself. 


Another lunatic in same Sana- 
Don QUICHOTE . 


Arrant snob. Celebrated chauf- 
feur to the Duchess of Mande- 
lieu. Vice-President of ‘The 
Friends of Motor Culture.” 


MacGuHeEeE . 


Orchestra, Porters, Lackeys. 


66 


Characters 


John Brown—Later known as Mervyn 


Tall, slender, and about thirty years of age, with 
spare, short, straw-coloured beard growing into two 
points. His hair is long and straight, after the tra- 
ditional fashion of young artists. His large, blue, 
introspective eyes, veiled with subjective dream, seem 
to be looking in rather than out, and mirror a pure, 
limpid, guileless nature. He has the slow, vague, un- 
decided movements of a somnambulist, and his rare 
gestures are of one who is living in a trance, or under 
a mystical spell. His lofty, luminous forehead entirely 
overbalances a narrow chin and a small, sensitive, 
tremulous mouth. With long slender hands and feet, 
tapering fingers, small mouth and ears, diminutive 
teeth, scanty beard and elongated oval face, he has 
all the characteristics of a declining aristocracy of the 
past, for the effete, newspapered, so-called aristocracy 
of to-day is so intermarried with millionaire butcher, 
grocer, pork-packer and Jew that it has become degen- 
erate not from over-refinement, but rather from over- 
crassness, and more often than not out-porks pork- 
packer in hog-wallowing vulgarity. There are, for- 
tunately, a few left whose aristocratic strongholds 
have not yet been stormed by fanatical or sentimental 
scientists, baseball swats, social Press agents, jazzing 
democrats and cinaphonafans. 

Occasionally, when speaking of his pictures, Mervyn 
displays the impulsive enthusiasm of a little child, 
which is only momentary, however, as he soon relapses 
into his former apathy, and withdraws again behind 
the veil which separates him from the objective world. 


67 


Mumbo Jumbo 


As twilight shimmers and plays through a grove of 
spring leaves, so do expressions of sweet melancholy, 
gentle bewilderment and mild apprehension hover and 
flit over his hyper-sensitized, ascetic face, which never 
blooms into merriment, although it is occasionally 
brightened by a faint, delicate smile of affectionate 
sympathy. 

At times his pale face appears to be illuminated by 
an almost supernatural light, the effect of which is 
intensified by his shock of yellow hair, forming, as it 
were, an aureole about his head. 

The Flemish and Italian primitives would have found 
in Mervyn an inspiring model for their heads of the 
Christ. In those happy, aristocratic, unmechanical 
days before the printing press had begun to press be- 
lief, hope, art and spirituality out of humanity, and 
when the Church was the high altar of faith and igno- 
rance, the temple of love, dream and legend, and the 
womb and cradle of the artist, Mervyn would have had 
an outlet, through creative expression, for all the 
beauty of his sensitive, delicate imagination and rare 
refinement which have been submerged below the surface 
of his consciousness in the twilight of his subconscious- 
ness by the hideous materialism, bluff, vulgarity, bru- 
tality and overwhelming charlatanism of our epoch. 

Although Mervyn has grown up in a peaceful little 
village in France, he has nevertheless been over- 
shadowed from childhood by the ugly, sordid spirit of 
our times, symbolized in the slick, arrivist, serialized 
leer of “Loyal Painless Thompson,” whose portrait, 
painted on an enormous blue and yellow bill-board, 
advertising laxatives, and erected in the field opposite 
68 


Characters 


his mother’s house, has been grinning at him ever since 
he can remember from over the wall into his garden, 
and through his bedroom window. 

Had Heine lived until the end of the nineteenth 
century, he would probably not have declared that 
“There is nothing new under the sun, and even the 
sun is a warmed-up joke,” for he would have seen Art 
for the first time in the history of humanity invaded 
by impostors, necromancers and ‘Loyal Painless 
Thompsons” who, realizing the unlimited possibilities 
of suggestion through the ever-increasing facilities of 
propaganda and advertisement, not only started in to 
exploit the public with art-shams as they have with 
nostrums, but have even succeeded in having them- 
selves accepted by their bleating bemused flocks as 
geniuses of Art. This preposterous hoax has finally 
been carried so far by these expert commercial psy- 
chologists, suggestionists and mercantile mesmerists, 
that the mutton-headed public is now as ready to 
swallow any critic-coated idiocy for art as they are 
sugar-coated bread pellets for liver-pills, or coloured 
sea-water for hair lotion. 


Mervyn is Art, weakened, corrupted, diseased, degen- 
erated and driven mad by democracy, science and 
power-machinery, which have turned the studio into 
publicity bureau, photographic parlour, news agency 
and laboratory of charlatanism, and filled it with ava- 
ricious, psychological empirics; brokers of genius; 
scientific mountebanks; perverse self-exploiting art- 
leeching critics; press-phobians ; news-delirians; mech- 
ano-monomaniacs; victimized neurasthenics; art pro- 


69 





Mumbo Jumbo 


moters; spell-binders; culture-vultures ; flabbergasted | 
“arty” blatherskites; wiggle-waggling, hocus-pocusing 
third-sex suffrag-“‘ists” and “ettes”; humdrum old 
spinsters craving “arty” sex-thrills, and fed on pish- 
posh and flap-doodle by bamboozling, art-foozling huck- 
sters; nocturnal echidnas, giglots, Menads, flappers 
and monkey-doodling flubdubs, drunk with balderdash 
of “ists” and “isms”; high-brows, whipper-snappers, 
popinjays, lackadaisical louts, and new-fangled nin- 
nies, calling themselves maestri; temperamental, harum- 
~ scarum squirts, and nincompoops posing as supermen; 
esthetic jack-nasties, jackanapes, thingum-a-gigs, and 
scallawags; artistic jub-jubs, boos, snarks, jaber- 
woks, boojums, and punchinellos, followed by their 
press agents; puddle-ducks, rag-tags, bobtails, and 
geese with brains and livers congested from tommy- 
rotten mass education crammed down their throats by 
higgledy-piggledy idealists, egocentric uplifters, cul- 
ture-cads, fanatical mob-muddlers, and silly, shilly- 
shally, lollipop, molly-coddle sentimentalists; and last, 
but not least, gilded, la-di-da, highfalutin lady and gen- 
tleman cuckoos, who lavishly pay to have their sterile 
eggs hatched into museum-dodos by sycophant, jackal 
artists. 


Mrs. Brown 


She is nearing sixty, simply but tastefully dressed 
in grey silk, with a point de Venise collar fastened at 
the throat by a large cameo brooch. Her wavy grey 
hair is parted in the middle and drawn down over her 
ears, from which are suspended long, old-fashioned 
earrings. ‘The wrinkles of her sensitive pale face har- 


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monize with the delicate beauty and loveliness of her 
expression, radiating benevolence, tolerance and refine- 
ment; which qualities, with gentleness of manner, are 
rapidly disappearing from the modern woman who, 
with votes sticking out of her overcoat pockets, sex 
relegated to laboratory, and birth to hospital ward of 
labelled shelf and ticketed infant, looks as if she had 
been gazing at spark-plugs, valves, clutches, stop- 
cocks, magnetos, gears, pistons and cranks, etc., rather 
than at the flowers of the field. 

An American by birth, and descendant of one of 
Virginia’s oldest and most aristocratic families, which 
had been ruined and practically exterminated by the 
Civil War, she was taken to England, while still an 
infant, by her widowed mother—her father, a gallant 
Confederate officer, having given his life in defence of 
one of the most refined, happy, dignified and aristo- 
cratic civilizations of the last century." Her mother, 
broken in heart and spirit, died shortly afterwards, 
leaving her daughter to the care of some distant Eng- 
lish relatives, who adopted the orphan out of pity for 
the mother and sympathy for the Southern cause, with 
which the virile aristocratic England of those days 


1“It is not yet certain that the world will be better for the 
triumph of the North over the Southern traditions of America. 
It is not yet certain that this victory was a good thing.”— 
G. K. CHeEsTErTON. 

I, for one, am certain that it was a very bad thing, as it 
meant the triumph of mongrel democracy and dehumanizing 
industrialism, over an agricultural, aristocratic, highly humanized 
civilization. Carlyle was also certain, and moreover epitomized 
his certainty in the following immortal lines: 

“The South said to the black, You are slaves, God bless you! 

The North said to the black, You are free, God damn you!” 


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naturally sided; not having been contaminated, as she 
is at present, with the degenerating virus of vulgarity, 
and the unscrupulous, democratic hoax of “Liberty, 
Equality and Fraternity.” 

(Norse.—As God in His wisdom has created upper 
and under dog, why viciously taunt the under one, 
between nips and bites, by fraternally telling him that 
he is free, equal, and even your superior?) 

At an early age she married John Brown, a prom- 
ising young English artist, and went with him to live in 
France, where their only son, John, who, later on, 
became world-famous as a painter under the pseudonym 
of “Mervyn,” was born. 

As Mrs. Brown has always found happiness and ful- 
filment in affection, devotion, loyalty and love, her 
life can be of little interest to the steel-bound, pipe- 
encircled, bill-boarded world of to-day, which has no 
time to concern itself with those who ‘are without 
ambition to see themselves reflected in its mirror of 
vanity, or more particularly with those who have no 
desire to exploit themselves through its newspaper, 
magazine and psychological laboratory of self-adver- 
tisement. 

For instance, it never occurred to Mrs. Brown, when 
her husband died, to have herself cinematographed and 
photographed, after the touching manner of our mod- 
ern weeping widows, in a dramatic position on his tomb, 
with hope of seeing her overwhelming grief filmed and 
illustrated in the daily Press. Nor, strangely enough, 
did the thought of having herself interviewed and 
“written up” as an unselfish, self-sacrificing, saintly 
mother ever cross her mind. 


12 





Characters 





She is of the chosen few who instinctively know and 
feel that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and 
consequently the word gratitude never dangles from 
her gift. 

She is simple, credulous and unsuspicious, like all 
uncomplex, sunlit, pellucid characters who, not having 
dark corners in their own souls, do not look for shadows 
in others. For never has a more biologically profound 
statement been uttered than “It takes a fox to catch 
a fox.” (I, being more than less of a fox myself, know 
whereof I speak!)* 

Like so many old-fashioned women, she merely con- 
tinued to do “her bit” in war time, as she had always 
done in peace time—unnoticed, unthanked, unrewarded. 

She is the type of woman worthy to have mothered 
those generous, blithe-spirited, immortal singers of 
The Skylark and Ode to the Nightingale, who, accord- 
ing to our modern blankety-blank versers of sky- 
scrapers, boilers, plumbing and machines, are no longer 
worth mentioning. 


Isaac Kougelman 


A dapper protuberant little man, around fifty-five. 
He is clean-shaven save for a very small tooth-brush 
moustache. His slightly bald round head pivots on 
an invisible neck. He exudes prosperity, health and 
self-satisfaction. His large black eyes, in pockets of 
puffy flesh, gleam with commercial activity and success. 

Between his thick sensual lips his tongue frequently 


1“We confess our little faults only to persuade others that 
we have no great ones.”—La RocHEFOUCAULD. 


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appears, and with dilating nostrils he seems to be con- 
tinually enjoying his senses of taste and smell. 

He wears the regulation officer’s uniform of the 
Y.M.C.A. in the last war. It is aggressively new, and 
his shoulders are padded after the American fashion. 
His tight Sam Brown belt accentuates his large hips, 
and makes him appear to be wearing a bustle. With 
his glittering buttons, shining leathers, creased trou- 
sers, glinting spurs, and pomaded head, he gives the 
general impression of having just popped out of sacer- 
dotal sartorial sanctuaries and bon-ton distingué ton- 
sorial salons. 

His voice is unctuous and persuasive, except in mo- 
ments of emotional stress, when it rises to a shrill key 
of anxiety and timorousness. On his small plump 
cupid-like hands sparkle rings, set with large cabochon 
emeralds and sapphires. Occasionally the trace of a 
very slight foreign accent may be detected in his speech. 
He is obviously an American Jew of the Ashkenazim. 


Joseph Rosengarten 


A tall, svelte, strikingly aristocratic American man 
of about forty-four years of age, with massive brow 
and black deep-set meditative eyes. His nose, expres- 
sive of rare distinction, is long, slender and aquiline. 
He is clean-shaven, and his straight, jet-black hair, 
combed back without a parting, intensifies the mat- 
white colour of his face. 

He is also dressed, like Kougelman, as an officer of 
the Y.M.C.A.; but his clothes, although smartly cut, 
look neither old nor new, and he wears them with the 


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accustomed ease of an English officer. His leathers 
have the patina of dark mahogany. 

As a pure offspring of the Sephardic Jews, who, 
from the eighth century to the discovery of America, 
inspired, directed and dominated the statecraft, litera- 
ture, arts, sciences, and general culture of Spain, he 
has preserved through the intensive atavism of a perse- 
cuted race the physical characteristics of his noble 
masterful forbears. 

He has a mellow, modulated voice and speaks without 
either an English or an American accent. He never 
laughs, but occasionally his face lights with a smile of 
philosophical irony tinged with sadness. His move- 
ments have the grace, power and litheness of a tiger. 
His gestures are controlled and co-ordinate harmoni- 
ously with his thoughts. The intellectual dome of his 
forehead is counter-balanced by a firm lean jaw and a 
resolute but sensitive sensuous mouth, unlike the com- 
pressed predatory mouth, fleshy jowl, and pugnacious 
chin, so characteristic of his compatriots, who are rush- 
ing up with what they call “pep and punch of he-men,” 
a clap-trap civilization. For the time being, this 
mechanical civilization is dominating the world, but it 
is doomed ere long to crumble, as it is founded on false 
values, unhealthy, misdirected egoism, and sham senti- 
mental idealism, which inevitably bring about class- 
hatred, sex-antagonism and unbelief. 


Ellen Flanngan 


Ellen is a daughter of the Emerald Isle, of myth, 
folk-lore and love-lore; and although she is over sixty, 


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with snow-white hair, her small, closely set, kindly, 
light china-blue eyes still twinkle with the humour- 
mystic light of “Old Erin.” 

She has the form of a pillow tied in the middle, 
snubby, optimistic, potato-nose, large, elastic, generous 
mouth, and long monkey-like upper lip, which she uses 
like a drop-curtain to conceal a gaping space in her 
upper gum. 

From her religious, superstitious depths bubbles of 
humour, quizzicality, devotion and wonder rise to the 
surface of her sympathetic, kindly face, to burst into 
rippling circles of Gothic expressions. 

Banshees, spooks, gnomes and pixies play a very 
lively part in her honest old head, and the pleasurable 
fears and delightful tremors of mystery she experiences 
from her fundamental belief in these “‘little folk” afford 
her far more happiness and gladsomeness of spirit 
than her Americanized sister Bridget derives from all 
the mechanical, vulgarizing, brutalizing amusements 
and standardized distractions of New York. For, 
shortly after her arrival in the “Land of the Free,” 
Bridget not only lost the liberty of her imagination, 
but also all respect for her beautiful, poetical, Celtic 
traditions, which she was told by her husband, an Irish 
policeman who had previously had his faith boiled out 
of him in the American melting-pot, were all “bunk.” 
It was not long before the old faith, reverence, and true 
self-respect were boiled out of her too; but she soon 
found substitutes in The Police Gazette, 'Tammany 
Hall, the Great White Way, sky-scrapers, Coney 
Island, and democracy in general. 

Old Ellen suggests a character in a lovely moonlit 
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fairy tale, wherein she might be the faithful old nurse 
to a shepherd lad who turns out to be of Royal birth 
and marries the King’s fair daughter. And, after all, 
is this not infinitely more delightful and inspiring than 
the climax of our modern fairy tale, where lynx-eyed 
newsboy and slick guttersnipe, through sharp practice, 
flattery and hypocrisy, turn into pompous, fatuous 
kings of tacks, sardine-tins, and patent bottle-stoppers, 
or into unscrupulous, self-righteous, mealy-mouthed, 
flaccid-jowled Senators, who take their autocratic 
selves far more seriously than they do their beloved 
Republic? 

This faithful, full-hearted old Irishwoman, who finds 
dignity, honour, happiness and self-expression in the 
service of gentle, cultured people, belongs to a type 
which, like many others expressive of higher aristo- 
cratic civilization, is rapidly being crushed out of exist- 
ence by the steam-roller of Democracy. This hideous 
levelling machine has already flattened jewelled-crowned 
Emperor into pot-hatted President; statesman into 
politician; artist into commercial illustrator, quack 
psychologist and mountebank suggestionist; church- 
man into showman; grande dame into demi-castor; 
virgin into demi-virgin; scientist into commercialized 
comfort-cracked inventor; grand seigneur into “good- 
mixer”; gentleman into middleman; courtier into hotel 
manager; guest into P.G.; poet into journalist and 
self-exploiting mercantile prig; family doctor into fee- 
leeching specialist; peasant into factory theow; arti- 
san and craftsman into serf of machine shop; man and 
woman into sex-equality; lover into psycho-analyst ; 
sweetheart into suffragette; Louise, Trilby, Mimi, into 


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Taylorized Casino “Cornuchettes”; and—Ellens into 
Bridgets. 


The Holy Virgin 


An Early Renaissance statue, slightly over half life- 
size, carved out of wood. Most of the gilding has 
disappeared, leaving the plaster underlay visible. 
Traces of polychromy remain. 

On the head is a high ornate golden crown, a por- 
tion of which has been broken off. The right hand and 
arm are missing. A greater part of the base and bits 
of the drapery have been knocked away, leaving sur- 
faces spongy with worm-holes. 

Her exquisitely small head, poised on a long liliaceous 
neck, suggests, in the words of the poet, a bell-flower 
swaying on a slender stem. 

Although shattered and disfigured, this graceful, 
gracious figure of the Holy Virgin still retains the 
mystical, celestial loveliness and spiritual beauty con- 
ceived of by an aristocratic age, founded on faith, 
reverence, noble aspirations, and a self-respecting sense 
of vital vigorous class distinctions: qualities which 
have since been sucked out of humanity by the double- 
headed warty octopus of democracy and _ power- 
machinery. 

Her tender, sensitive, compassionate smile and the 
wistful naive purity and ethereal sweetness of her 
expression would hardly meet with the approbation of 
our bobtail, cocktail, bob-haired flappers; sporting, 
sweatered, gum-chewing, clubby, swaggering, swearing 
‘“he-women”; silly, supercilious super-sales-ladies ; 
political viragoes; office-seeking vixens; brazen bediz- 


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Characters 


ened biddies and mechanized factory jades, decked out 
in the very latest Paris models serialized in East-side 
sweat-shops; husband beaters; sex-equality shrews; 
scientific termagants; lady-chairmen, lady-charwomen, 
lady-bird professors, lady-bug parlour socialists ; com- 
munist vampires ; war-decorated succubi; polyandrists ; 
militant suffragette furies; Gibson, Fisher, Christy & 
Co.’s vamping little daughters of democracy; globe- 
trotting cosmopolitanized beldams; professional society 
plutocratic press-belles. 

I also fear that were our Virgin to materialize, she 
would be found lacking in “snap” and ‘‘go” by our 
tired business men who, tricked out with every con- 
ceivable kind of clasp, snap and button, and with 
*“Tdeal’? fountain pens and “‘Eversharps” hooked to 
their pocket with “‘Winterbottom’s True-lover-clips,” 
“bid you Good-morning from behind a Robert Burns 
cigar” when—they are not too tired. I can hear 
Rooseveltians too denouncing her as a mollycoddle 
without ‘“‘pep.” 

The “regular guys,” of whom we are told by the 
Literary Digest Lady Astor is one, would unquestion- 
ably find her “perfectly punk.” Our clean-cut haber- 
dashered Adonises, wearing the ‘‘World’s Smartest 
Collar suggestive of Dressy Dignity”; “’Topkis Union 
Suits, giving comfort at every point from neck to 
knee”; “Nettleton Shoes, the criterion by which style 
is set’?; “Ventilated, Love-meshed Straw Hats with 
Apollo Rims”; and “Soul-stirring Ties of Passionate 
Pattern”; would find her simply “bum” in comparison 
to their jazzing athletic “cuties” with “fa skin you love 
to touch,” and dressed in “alluringly distinctive fault- 


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less sport togs,” “celestially chic Onyx Pointex 
Hosiery,” and ‘ethereal luxite lingerie for Debs and 
Sub-Debs.” 

Ritzonians would think her dowdy, provincial, uncul- 
tured and prudish; Greenwich Villagers and Rotun- 
dians would brush her aside, as they do all beautiful 
things, with a self-satisfied gesture of utter scorn. To 
scientists she would appear ignorant, uneducated, 
superstitious and childish; and Communists, Marxists, 
Bolshevists and intellectual Labourites would hate and 
despise her for being compassionate and human. 

Our poets, philosophers and writers, who strut down 
corridors of newspaper fame scattering in their literary 
paths of glory “Goddams,” “bloodies” and “to hells,” 
etc., which they imagine are symbols of superman viril- 
ity, would surely consider The Madonna stuck up, 
unresponsive, cold, affected, idiotically aloof, and, in 
fact, an appalling bore. Apropos of Goddams, I have 
just been confronted by at least half a thousand of 
them “in the most monumental work that has ever 
flowed from the pen of an American author.” 

To be sure, nowadays, every book that flows from 
the pen of an American author is not only monumental, 
but immortally so. America, however, will never be- 
come overcrowded with immortal monuments, for as 
soon as Americans begin to suspect that they are really 
in front of something permanent and unchangeable, 
they not only become restive and nervous, but unhappy, 
miserable, and even terrified. 

And alas! I even feel sure that our new-fangled 
men of God who advertise and popularize religion by 
turning their churches into cinema halls and variety 
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shows are, in their heart of hearts, secretly ashamed 
of what they necessarily must consider a reactionary 
spirit in Mary, Mother of Jesus. And woe to him, in 
these progressive times, who is suspected of that car- 
dinal sin—reactionaryism. 

This statue of the Holy Virgin was fashioned in 
Florence in the middle of the fifteenth century, in a 
small humble workshop, where a young artisan, Giu- 
seppe Delfiore, worked, in the midst of his devoted 
family, on Sundays, holidays, and odd moments when 
he was not employed in the studio of Ghiberti, one of 
the great Florentine sculptors to whom he was appren- 
ticed, and where he met the nobility of Tuscany, who 
were always most friendly with the artisans, and gen- 
erously encouraged them in every possible way. 

Giuseppe, like all his friends engaged in the various 
handicrafts of the epoch, worked with the joy and 
zest of self-expression and belief, from which are derived 
the highest and noblest forms of human happiness. 

Although Giuseppe was merely an average artisan 
of his period, and could neither read nor write, and had 
never ventured farther than a few miles from Flor- 
ence, he nevertheless had received a far more compre- 
hensive education and a more basic and traditional 
instruction in his art and all handicrafts connected 
with it than is given to the newspapered, magazine- 
reading, commercialized, travelled, gimcrack art worker 
of to-day. 

In dignity, as in courtesy and refinement there are 
few, even among our most favoured classes, who would 
not suffer in comparison to him, and he was far supe- 
rior, both morally and spiritually, to our average college 

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graduate, whose B.A. applies more to Bachelor of Ath- 
letics than Bachelor of Arts. 

If civilization means machinery and the highest pos- 
sible perfection of material comforts, we have then 
arrived at heights never before dreamed of by humanity. 
If, on the contrary, civilization is dependent on internal 
qualities, which I believe it to be, we have sunk to a 
depth of vulgarity, viciousness, brutality, dishonesty, 
amorality, trickery, and utter disregard of considera- 
tion for others, never before reached except by the 
most savage and cruel tribes, and by civilizations in 
the last stages of decadence. 


‘You are the mystical, instinctive, unfathomable 
love I feel for my well-beloved mother, of whose flesh 
I am; and the mystical instinctive unfathomable love I 
feel for my beloved wife, out of whose flesh my children 
have come. You are mother, wife, and daughter in 
one, and I shall come to You with love of father and 
son, for You are the Holy Mother of fathers and sons. 

“When I was a little child You smiled down upon 
me from your glittering altar in the great dark cathe- 
dral, and I felt comforted and reassured. You were 
my mother, and my mother was You. And from every 
cross-road and from every nook your welcoming arms 
were stretched out to me. And now as a man I come 
to You for comfort and reassurance, for You alone 
can give me hope and tenderness and encouragement. 
And You alone still smile upon me as You did from 
your glittering altar in the great dark cathedral, and 
fill my heart with belief and gladsomeness; for I am 
still as a little child in the presence of your serene 


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purity, your heavenly beauty and divine compassion. 
*““May God give me strength and power to express 
through my Art the mystical instinctive and unfathom- 
able adoration I feel for You through my beloved 
parents, my beloved wife, and my beloved children.” 


These and many similar thoughts flitted through the 
mind of Giuseppe Delfiore while he was carving virgins 
out of wood to be placed in shrines and chapels on 
highways and byways, where nowadays grin the hideous 
faces of “Loyal Painless Thompsons,” advertising their 
nostrums. 

And now, after four hundred years, this most beau- 
tiful and inspiring of all symbols, from which humanity 
has derived infinitely more hope and solace than it ever 
will from science, comes to us through the hands of 
the Jews, broken and shattered, to be finally landed in 
an insane asylum, after having been betrayed by Phil- 
istine and Pharisee, stood on its head by vulgarity, 
commerce and science, and, with tricked, dissimulated 
restoration, fraudulently sold as an Old Master to 
Ezra P. Packer, the American king of chewing-gum. 


Moses Stein 


In the fifties, tall, lank, clean-shaven, with thick 
grey hair and a long or, as a “New Republic sort of 
person” would call it, dolicocephalic skull. He has the 
skin, colouring and harmless expression of a bibliophile. 
This scholarly impression he heightens by wearing the 
horn-rimmed spectacles of a Chinese sage. 

The glances of erudition and profound wisdom which 


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he casts over his spectacles thrill and kill the super- 
cultured-crazed American wife, and terrify the sub- 
cultured-business-crazed American husband. 

His habitat for the last years has been a large plush 
sofa in the middle of the Kougelman Galleries, where 
he may be found meditatively roosting, like a great owl, 
with his forefinger thrust between the leaves of some 
classical book on Art. 

He has as instinctive a flair for promising clients 
as has an owl for gorged mice scuttling back to their 
holes after a riotous night in well-stocked larders. 

“Friends of Art” and Art collectors find themselves 
in conversation with him without being aware of how 
they drifted into it. 

Even the most uncultured of our “cultured ladies” 
are delighted to find, after a chat with him, what a 
sensitive appreciation they have for Art. Later this 
discovery is well rubbed into their poor ignorant hus- 
bands’ who, out of self-defence, are finally forced to 
invest in one or more canvases or art objects from 
Kougelman & Co. 

Moses Stein is as skilful in his “cultural masquerade” 
as is our modern arrivist, or political rogue, in his 
democratic one; and like Kougelman, who is “‘gotten 
up to beat the band,” Moses is gotten up to beat the 
“arty hourgeois.” 


Van Rensselaer-Levineson 


Of average height, slight, and about fifty-two years 
of age, with small closely cut beard. In every way he 
tries to accentuate his slight resemblance to the King 
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of England, on whom he has evidently patterned him- 
self, 

He speaks with an affected English drawl, and wears 
a monocle, which he is either constantly adjusting in 
his eye or dangling between thumb and forefinger. 

He is an American Jew, born in the slums of New 
York, of Russian parents. 

With splendid pluck, steel-like determination, and 
rare ability, he finally succeeded, by toiling all day 
and following courses in night-schools, in entering 
Harvard University, entirely unaided, where he worked 
his way through by coaching rich, dissipated class- 
mates. 

Having started as a child by cadging plaster statu- 
ettes on Broadway, he gradually conceived the idea of 
a career through Art, foreseeing that America was 
about to free herself from the bullying, brutal heel of 
the Irish immigrant conquest,’ and emerge from the 
epoch of spittoons, backyards festooned with family 
washing, brown stone fronts, and bearded Mephistophe- 
lian goats, surveying, with cold, pallid, satanic eyes 
from mounds in vacant lots, refuse, junk and tin cans. 

He further realized the great financial and social 
possibilities of Art expert and critic, when crude, eager 

1 As it was an Irish nurse who first spanked my little bottom 
and unfailingly paraded me through the streets on St. Patrick’s 
Day with a green ribbon on my bonnet; as I received my first 
thrashing from an Irish “mick” four years my senior; as it was 
an Irish “cop” who arrested me for trespassing on his “keep-off- 
the-grass” plot; as I was first led to the altar of Venus by a fair 
colleen; and as I discovered on attaining my majority that my 
home city of New York was morally, mentally, and physically 


under the control of Irish politicians, I have, quite naturally, 
referred to this epoch of our history as the Irish conquest. 


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and socially apprehensive America would begin, with 
millions, billions, trillions bulging from her pockets, 
to buy up with democratic American dollars the art 
treasures of Europe, and corner crowns and coronets 
for her golden daughters. 

Shortly after graduation, as a first step in his life’s 
campaign, he succeeded in arousing, through subtle, 
Semitic flattery, the interest and affection of a rich, 
sentimental Boston lady with literary pretensions, for 
whom he wrote a book on Art, which she published 
under her name. 

He became her lover, and when he had gathered 
sufficient funds from her through pen and passion, 
went to Oxford for a post-graduate course in Arts and 
Letters, where he acquired several degrees, an English 
drawl, and at the same time arbitrarily hyphenated 
“Van Rensselaer” to his Jewish patronym, realizing 
how appetizing a common tasteless chub may become 
to a democratic American palate if served up with a 
highly seasoned hollandaise sauce on a gilded platter 
belonging to an old patroon family of New York. 

On leaving Oxford he obtained a position as Art 
critic on an English newspaper in Paris, where his 
skilful use of novel art jargon in literature and con- 
versation soon made him conspicuous and welcome in 
the American Art colony. He eventually discovered 
amazing merit in the insipid work of a wealthy Ameri- 
can sculptress who, with the skilled assistance of a 
number of highly paid Italian modellers, had planned, 
with the usual U.S.A. “pep” and ‘“‘punch,” to outdo 
Michelangelo. ‘The reward he received from her for 
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Characters 


his rare discernment in recognizing her genius enabled 
him to go to Rome. 

Although a renaissance of appreciation for the 
Quatro and Cinque cento primitives had been blooming 
for some time in European Art circles, he saw the 
possibility of popularizing the movement and carrying 
it into America. He therefore began to specialize in 
this epoch, and bought up for a trifling sum all the 
available pictures he could lay his hands on of an 
obscure Primitive, about whose life and works he wrote 
a book. Having thus brought these pictures into prom- 
inence, he disposed of them at enormous profit to a 
“primitive” American millionaire. 

With this book and the sale of these pictures he slid 
on fame and fortune into the dinner-parties, opera- 
boxes and boudoirs of the most exclusive femmes du 
monde. 

To-day he is universally recognized as the greatest 
Art critic since Ruskin, and his word is law in the Art 
world. He is High Priest of erudition and culture in 
Ritzonian society, and even causes more flit and flutter 
among culture-stricken ladies than does a Grand Duke 
or an American multi-millionaire, or the great Bergson 
himself, before whom some of our over-cosmopolitan- 
ized ladies have been known to swoon from gongoristic 
chic. 


Norman de Puyster Van Loon 


A gay, sprightly, slim, spick-and-span little man in 
the fifties, with bald head, large parrot nose, dyed 
yellow moustache, and light, watery, sentimental eyes 
brimming with goodwill and kindly feeling. He is 

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always smartly dressed, and is never seen without a 
large purple boutonniére in day-time and a white one 
at night. 

He reminds one of an exquisitely patterned grey 
moth with mauve spots, which flutters in at dusk and 
flutters out at dawn. For years he has fluttered from 
antiquary to tea-cup, from charity bazaar to dinner- 
party, from “first night” to cabaret. 

He is an early Ritzonian, and for over thirty years 
has been haunting Paris, Venice, Deauville and Cannes. 
Almost any day during the late autumn and early 
spring he may be seen taking luncheon at the Ritz 
Hotel in Paris, where he is held in high esteem and even 
affectionate regard by the famous manager, Mr. Ellis, 
Viceroy and Father Confessor of Ritzonian Society, 
and Olivier, his celebrated maitre d’hétel and cham- 
berlain. 

As descendant of a distinguished old Knickerbocker 
family of New York, he is most ingenious in subtilely 
acquainting strangers with his aristocratic birth and 
titled European connections. Since there now exists 
in America, behind the gigantic political bluff and 
social hypocrisy of democracy, more class distinction 
than in Europe, Americans unfortified by titles have 
been naturally forced to develop new forms of offensive 
and defensive snobbism, wherein characteristically they 
have become specialists and experts. 

The pyrotechnically witty, progressive and pro- 
foundly erudite Marquise de Loather, a most exclusive 
Ritzonian, is his sister. His other sister, after having 
obtained newspaper fame as a leader of the Militant 
Suffragettes, divorced her husband to marry a cousin 


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of the Sultan of Turkey. Her book, entitled The 
Harem, written after she became a Turkish Princess, 
is considered by Ritzonians to be a most brilliant 
encomium of Mohammedan faith and a skilful defence 
of seraglian customs and formalities. 

Like his compatriots, he is entirely devoid of imagi- 
nation and true art feeling; but he displays rare under- 
standing in harmoniously assembling old furniture, 
bibelots, and works of Art. His apartment in Paris is 
a small museum of eclectic culture, and has given him 
the position in the American colony of savant and art- 
arbiter. For although America is as yet uncreative 
in Art, she has surpassed modern Europe in good taste, 
as applied to interior decoration, architecture and 
landscape-gardening. 

On his library table among the latest European 
periodicals is always to be seen The New Republic, to 
which he would naturally subscribe, as he is, like Van 
Loons in general, “A New Republic sort of person.” 

During the Great War the strain and responsibility 
of giving daily tea-parties to wounded officers and titled 
nurses so racked his nerves that he would awake at 
night with a start, to find himself asking his distin- 
guished but imaginary guests, grouped around his bed, 
“strong or weak?” and “how many lumps?” This 
phrase of tea-ritual in time became an obsession, and 
led to insomnia and nervous collapse. After having 
been unsuccessfully treated for incipient psychasthenia 
by a dozen or more renowned neurologists and psychia- 
trists of Paris, London and Switzerland, he was even- 
tually cured, at great expense, through suggestion, by 
a clever Jewish charlatan, who had previously been an 


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illiterate clown in an itinerant circus, but who, having 
met with conspicuous success as a healer, finally man- 
aged to become a protégé of the Duchess of Mandelieu. 

This quack’s spectacular cure of Van Loon and his 
book entitled Super-scientific Psychocentric Occultism, 
written for him by a starving medical student in ex- 
change for food and a few francs, brought him such 
celebrity as a worker of miracles that, in order to avoid 
police explanations for practising without a medical 
permit, he decided to dedicate his life to God, and 
thenceforth scornfully refused all fees, but accepted 
donations, to enable him “to tabernacle in the flesh 
among my followers and carry on my Saviour’s work.” 

Mr. Van Loon, on being awarded the Legion of 
Honour for self-sacrifice and devotion to the Allied 
Cause, became violently patriotic, and at the slightest 
provocation would oratorically take to Washington, 
Lafayette and Sister Republics, as a duck takes to 
water. 

In spite of America’s triumphant part in the war, 
he has nevertheless secretly remained, like all Ameri- 
cans living in Europe, socially ashamed of his crude 
compatriots, and would shrink from the thought of 
being classified as a member of the American colony of 
Paris, as he considers himself to be a cosmopolitan. 
In this view he has always received comfort and moral 
support from his sisters, the Marquise and the Princess, 
who, in spite of their advanced socialistic views, con- 
sider it part of their marital duties to scrupulously 
avoid all Americans, except those possessed of titles 
through marriage. In order further to distract Euro- 
pean attention from the social handicap of having been 
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born Americans, any reference to their native land 
was taboo until the outbreak of the Great War, not- 
withstanding the fact that the Van Loons, like some 
other aristocratic American families, could leave a vast 
number of European titles by the wayside in their 
genealogical march back to Adam and Eve. But the 
heraldic fowl of old Europe could nevertheless hardly 
be expected to allow an uncoroneted American hen to 
strut about in their emblazoned courtyard on equal 
social terms without having first laid her golden egg of 
Democracy in their matrimonial basket of impoverished 
aristocracy. It is true that during the Great War 
America rose a trifle in Europe’s social eye, but she 
has since slid back to her previous plane of social in- 
feriority. Americans are still given precedence, how- 
ever, over the black and tan races. 

Although since the war “Normie” Van Loon has been 
working up the “popular and_hail-fellow-well-met” 
policy, I nevertheless wonder if, on returning the recent 
affectionate and intimate appeal for re-subscription 
sent out by The New Republic, he wrote “‘you bet” on 
the margin, as the distinguished editors of that dis- 
tinguished weekly solicited their distinguished readers 
to do. 

(Norre.—Since snobbism is a composite instinct 
made up of self-preservation, sex, gregariousness and 
vanity, I would not have you think, gentle reader, that 
I am not, after my own fashion, quite as much of a 
snob as our friend Van Loon. Mr. Thackeray, who 
fathered the word, was unquestionably a vital vigorous 
one himself. 

But, curiously enough, although I have heard many 

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men admit and even boast of their viciousness, treach- 
ery, dishonesty and brutality, the only person I have 
ever met who frankly admitted being a snob was a mild- 
eyed old hermit who collected sea shells and wrote son- 
nets to Humpty-Dumpty.) 


The Duchess of Mandelieu 


In the early thirties, tall, extremely slender, with a 
magnetic and dominant personality vibrating with un- 
limited nervous energy. Her movements and gestures 
are sudden and unexpected, suggesting spontaneity, 
impulsiveness and sincerity; but an unusually keen 
observer could detect behind all this histrionic display 
a cool, calm, calculating brain. She has never felt 
love or affection, although she can simulate both with 
rare intensity. She is mental, unscrupulous and amoral, 
but she enjoys being generous and kind, when these 
qualities are consistent with her vanity and ambition. 
Should she, however, be crossed or thwarted, she would 
be capable of refined cruelty and ruthlessness, even to 
those dearest to her. 

From her earliest childhood she recognized jungle 
law to be human law, and that the true biological 
strength of women lay in claw and fang of sex attrac- 
tion, flattery and ridicule; and consequently has re- 
mained indifferent to unbiological feminist movements. 
Like all political brains, she skilfully deploys those 
trustworthy, never-failing old decoys of altruism and 
love of the plain people, ruses concocted by the first 
tribal politician to obtain self-advertisement and power. 

Although of Jewish birth, she is of the most beautiful 
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Italian type, with dark luxuriant hair, camellia-white 
skin, a delicate slightly arched nose and large mesmeric 
black eyes. Her lips are stained vivid crimson, and 
her eyes are darkened. Her face is extremely animated 
and seductive, and she has a bewitching mannerism of 
wrinkling her nose and half closing her eyes. Occasion- 
ally she affects a French accent, but her usual pro- 
nunciation is mildly English, having diligently and in- 
telligently cured herself of the nasal stigma of a sexless, 
sapless, mechanized American twang. 

Her rapid, ejaculatory sentences are accompanied 
by soft mocking laughter, gurgling up from her in- 
stinctive belief that the world is but a puppet show of 
sham and farce. 

She is a Ritzonian and one of the leaders of that 
new cosmopolitan Society, inspired by America and 
founded by Mr. Ritz, which has supplanted, with res- 
taurant, casino, hotel and dance-hall, the salon and 
court life of the past, and substituted hotel managers 
and maitres d’hétel for chamberlains and masters of 
ceremony. 

Born in a New York FEast-side slum of an Armenian 
Jewish father and Italian mother, she grew up under 
the three golden balls of her parents’ pawn-shop with 
fixed determination and haunting ambition to escape 
from the fust and gloom of junk and cast-off garments, 
and the sinlit glitter of stolen trinkets, peeping out 
from dusty shelves and shadowy corners with evil eyes 
of poisonous insects. 

At the tender age of fifteen she managed to be res- 
cued from the sordid meanness and squalid ugliness of 
her surroundings by a wealthy young reformer engaged 


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in Utopian settlement work. She soon contrived to 
have herself seduced by her guileless sentimental young 
uplifter, and later extorted money from him, by black- 
mail, in collusion with Patrick Sweeny, a Tammany 
ward boss who manceuvred the affair. This was her 
first lesson in practical politics, in which she became 
an adept during the two years she remained with the 
boss as his mistress. 

Her next victim was the sexagenarian multi-million- 
aire, Mr. Moses Blumenberg, newspaper and magazine 
proprietor, whom she snared with her wiles and radiant 
beauty, and then led to the altar, having been ably 
assisted by her Irish boss, who had placed her to this 
end with his respected and naive maiden aunt, where he 
had passed her off to Blumenberg and the world as his 
lovely cousin. 

Backed by her husband’s newspaper and financial 
influence, she fulfilled the pre-nuptial promise given to 
her faithful “cousin,” by having him made Police Com- 
missioner of New York. In this post he acquitted 
himself with such righteous energy and puritanical 
fervour that he was next nominated by the “Clean 
Politics League” and elected Mayor on a reform ticket, 
which position he still occupied at the time of the 
Mervyn Art Exhibition. 

As Mrs. Blumenberg, she was a paragon of wives 
—kind, considerate, capable, light-hearted and enter- 
taining. Their house became a centre for journalists, 
politicians and artists; and she wove a spell of such 
youth and happiness about her old husband that it was | 
not long before he was entirely controlled and domi- 
nated by her vivid personality. At his death, some 
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years later, he left her sole heiress to his vast fortune. 

Although she occupied a conspicuous and influential 
position, she nevertheless realized that, as the widow 
of Moses Blumenberg, she could not hope to penetrate 
into the most sacred circles of New York Society. 
Consequently, with a parterre opera-box, and Newport 
in view, she negotiated a second marriage with an im- 
pecunious but smart young clubman of powerful family 
connections. 

She soon exhausted American court life and, seeing 
the possibilities of a more picturesque and international 
career abroad, discarded her second husband with a 
Paris divorce, in order to wed the bankrupt Duke of 
Mandelieu of Bourbon descent. 

By this third alliance she secured one of the most 
distinguished social positions in Europe, and by means 
of her vast fortune, and psychological understanding 
of self-exploitation acquired as the former wife of a 
newspaper owner, became world-famous. 

As she now felt herself entirely safe and unrestricted 
with her complacent Duke, she had, like most femmes 
du monde of past and present, innumerable lovers, not 
from any sexual temptation, but from an innate sense 
of vanity, ambition and instinctive desire to torment 
and dominate the male. Her latest liaison with Van 
Rensselaer-Levineson (which resulted in the birth of 
an heir to the ancient Dukedom of Mandelieu) is based, 
in spite of mild antagonism existing between them, on 
race sympathy, memories of the bitter struggle and 
suffering of their childhood, and the literary prestige 
he has given her, by having written a book and numer- 
ous brilliant political articles under her name. 


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Notwithstanding her genuine fondness for Levineson, 
she has held securely on her hook for several years one 
of the most powerful Prime Ministers of the epoch, 
while at the same time carrying on clandestine rela- 
tions and political intrigues with the foremost leader 
of the French Extremist Party. It has also been 
remoured that it was she who inspired a certain famous 
philosopher to write an essay on sex, contradicting his 
previous theories, which had caused an upheaval in the 
intellectual world. For less serious diversion she sur- 
rounds herself by a court of biddable snoblings and 
sentimental masochistic chiceurs, of whom Van Loon 
is one. 

As arbiter and creator of fashion, the greatest 
Parisian dressmakers, jewellers, modists and_ shoe- 
makers compete with each other to obtain the privilege 
of executing designs created for her by many of the 
most celebrated artists of the day. In fact, all vendors 
of art and luxury grovel at her feet. 

She is the vital, feline, predatory type, belonging to 
the unscrupulous, conscienceless, arrivist, triumphant 
modern class of political, religious, scientific, artistic 
and financial master-charlatans who, ever since the ad- 
vent of the power-machine and the consequent appear- 
ance of unbelief and democracy, have gradually ob- 
tained the direction of human affairs, through every 
conceivable form of humbug, political intrigue—based 
on false hypocritical altruism—and scientific commer- 
cial suggestion, until they are to-day in absolute con- 
trol of the world’s destiny. 

Humanity, to be sure, has always been dominated 
by a small amoral, lawless, brigand group, but it was 
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unquestionably happier under the artisan-made heel of 
an aristocratic brigand than it is to-day under the 
serialized boot of a democratic thug. 


Ezra P. Packer 


About six feet in height, with massive frame, grey 
hair, clean-shaven face, and penetrating suspicious 
eyes. He carries his sixty-five years with the health 
and vigour of a Captain of Industry who has accumu- 
lated bulk in body with prosperity and self-assurance. 

The corners of his compressed slit-like mouth are 
lost in deep cheek furrows, encircling an ingratiating 
inlaid grin, which is worn in America as a facial ad- 
vertisement of success, democratic good-fellowship, and 
altruistic endeavour. His aggressive combative chin, 
cloven in the centre, protrudes between flaccid jowls, 
draped over a heavy undershot jaw. He speaks with 
the immobile lips of a ventriloquist, in a nasal monot- 
onous voice. His gestures are few, definite and au- 
thoritative. 

He is the old-fashioned type of American magnate 
who is gradually being superseded by the scholastic 
ascetic priest of high finance, who is making of business 
an art, a religion. 

A dentist’s chair was the cradle of his fame and 
fortune, for while the dentist was at work on an abscess 
in his gum caused by an unclean toothpick, the idea 
suddenly flashed through his mind of the commercial 
possibility of hygienic toothpicks, sealed in sterilized 
paper wrappers. From that moment he became ob- 


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sessed with the scheme, and thought and dreamed 
toothpick. 

This inspiration was the result of his being, at that 
time, book-keeper for a small company manufacturing 
“Klite Hygienic Toilet Paper” at great profit. 

He finally managed to interest his employer in his 
venture, and shortly afterwards the “P.P.C. Tooth- 
pick,” in crisp gold-tipped envelopes, was introduced 
into leading hotels and restaurants, while among the 
galaxy of joyous magazine and newspaper advertise- 
ments of foods, laxatives, and motors, etc., appeared a 
diptych of heads: one with bandaged jaw and tragic 
mien, the other wreathed in smiles and gaily holding 
a toothpick. Under the former was written: 


‘An unclean toothpick, not a spree, 
Has brought this swollen jaw to me.” 


While under the latter appeared: 


‘‘Now if you would from germs be free, 
Be sure and use a ‘P.P.C.’ ” 


This stanza was his first contribution to American 
literature. In a comparatively short time he tooth- 
picked his way into a million dollars, which enabled 
him to ascend the chewing-gum throne and roll up one 
of the greatest fortunes in America. Having thus 
become a national figure, his views, not only on finance 
and politics, but also on Art, literature, sociology and 
philosophy, were eagerly sought for and published 
broadcast. 

About this time he was nominated for the Hall of 
Fame by one of America’s most popular magazines, 


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along with the “Czar of Jazz,” a celebrated prize- 
fighter, a world-renowned cabaret dancer, Richard 
Strauss, a famous free-versing society leader, the illus- 
trious inventor of the ‘“‘Nyké Letmedoit” carpet- 
sweeper, and Auguste Rodin. 

The following logical, obvious reasons were given 
for Ezra P. Packer’s nomination as an immortal :— 
“Because he is one of America’s greatest poets of high 
finance; because his modesty is almost of a super- 
natural quality; because he carries his keen humour 
into his game of golf; because his taste, erudition, 
appreciation and intuition of all that is true, noble 
and best in art are infallible; but chiefly because he 
is philanthropist, altruist, royal-good-fellow and the 
proud father of the clever, lovely Miss Patricia, des- 
tined in the not far-distant future to be a leader of the 
Smart Set and one of Democracy’s fairest and most 
radiant daughters.” 

As his fame increased, he felt it incumbent upon him, 
like so many of his great and august contemporaries, 
to record his triumphs in an autobiography which, 
according to present-day traditions, was written by his 
B.A. Secretary. 

The eulogistic preface to it, contributed by the 
President of the United States, who largely owed his 
election to Packer’s enormous party contributions, 
presented the author to the youth of America as one 
of the most noble and inspiring examples of American 
genius and enterprise. This preface was later read by 
the President himself at the unveiling of the Packer 
monument in Packerville, the chewing-gum citadel, be- 
fore thousands of awe-struck spectators who, at the 


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close of the ceremony, were finally brought to tears by 
the humility and modesty of Mr. Packer’s little ad- 
dress, delivered by him from the base of his own statue. 

He has received decorations from practically every 
country in the world, and was recently among the first 
dozen geniuses to be selected from the antiquated, over- 
crowded Hall of Fame, for a place in a brand new 
reinforced concrete Hall of Super-Fame. 


Ezra P. Packer, of unbelief in everything, and half 
belief in himself, is symbol of our epoch. 

He is mediocrity crowned by mediocrity; nonentity 
crowning nonentity; quack crowning quack; fanatic 
crowning fanatic; ass crowning ass; dunghill crowning 
dunghill. 

He is Japan in pot-hat; China without pigtail, and 
“Son of Heaven” set; mystical Russia with “Little 
Father” thrown to hyenas of communism; Turkey of 
unveiled women; Imperial Germany saddled by Ebert; 
England of Lloyd George, instead of St. George and 
King George, Emperor of India; Sweden of “By this 
it is decreed” substituted for “We, Gustave, by the 
grace of God, King of the Swedes, Goths, and Wends” ; 
Italy reduced from Doge and Magnifico to democra- 
tized throne placating thug and cut-throat; Spain with 
serialized Carmen, gigolo Grandee, and Ritzonianized 
King. 

He is France, of Falli¢res-Loubet, Galleries-Lafay- 
ette, Casino, “‘Monsieur-Dame,” Boulevard Raspail; 
and sky-scraping America, brandishing and roosevelt- 
ing a big stick of machine-power progress and altruistic 
buffoonery in scientific circus of broncho-busting poli- 
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Characters 


tics, while bellowing for more babes and more votes 
from an over-populated world which has already voted 
itself into gutter and slave-driven factory. 

He is interminable lines of barbered, tailored, im- 
maculate, perfect gentlemen serving “soft wet goods” 
and dry goods with lofty condescension, opposite in- 
terminable lines of modish, manicured, ‘‘coiffured,” 
paint and powdered perfect ladies of phone, type- 
writer and counter, wilting from ennui, and supercilious 
chic, in “decolty” blouse, Louis Quinze heels, spider- 
web near-silk stockings, and wearing the inevitable 
cheap imitation pearl necklace, ‘suggestive of that in- 
tangible something—the atmosphere of select, ‘spiffy’ 
smart society.” 

He is Bolshevist negro, with Ford car, wearing 
Chesterfield collar, Lord Dunraven derby, and distin- 
guished Oxfords of royal red, indicting civilization in 
his third divorce suit trial. 

He is cable, encircling the world to supply Press with 
gossip, lies, scandal and idiotic drivel about idiotic 
people. 

He is a million slick, smart, newspaper reporters, 
interviewing and snap-shotting a million slick, smart 
mediocrities. 

He is “Loyal-Painless-Thompson” lying in wait at 
every street corner, road-crossing, and car window, to 
attack you, with his cathartic grin, from flaming bill- 
boards advertising laxatives. 

He is factory, kodak, phonograph, sewing-machine, 
cinema, Ford, tram, telephone, in the gentle, smiling 
isle of Queen Liliuokalani. 


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He is self-exploitation, vulgarity and unbelief in 
pulpit, and—unbelief in pew. 

He is funicular, crawling over snow-white breasts of 
the Jungfrau with beer saloon on top; and radiant 
Riviera pocked with ‘Faux-Arts” villas by “Beaux- 
Arts” architects. 

He is trolly-car around pyramid and Sphinx of 
Cheops; tooting steamboat up and down the Grand 
Canal of Venice; and dam of commerce submerging 
the temple-crested island of Phile. 

He is black intestinal pipe-line gulping up sylvan 
cascades and crystalline water-falls, to digest them 
into factories, illuminated nostrums, ‘“‘movies” and 
casinos. 

He is frantic Press-hypnotized mob, fighting for 
smile of approbation from prize-fighting thug, film 
freak, political crook, and “Colossus of Swat,” with 
salaries far exceeding that of the President of the 
United States.* 

He is Watt, Fulton, Edison, Marconi, Morse, Bell, 
and all the other scientific toxinators who have mech- 
anized, enslaved and degraded man, annihilated art by 
annihilating segregation, destroyed handicraft by fac- 
tory, sunk humanity into the “Black Ages” of democ- 
racy, and robbed life of the greatest of all luxuries— 
leisure and privacy, wherein alone can bloom faith, 
love, dream, refinement, imagination and individuality. 

He is decadent monarch in “golf outfit,” “tennis 


* Dempsey was recently offered $750,000 for one fight. A child 
of seven is receiving half a million dollars for acting in three 
films. The President of the United States receives a salary of 
$75,000 per annum. 


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Characters 


suitings,” “dress suit” and ingratiating kodak grin, 
cringing to decadent democracy. 

He is vulgarized, bankrupt, effete, jazzing European 
aristocracy, supported by jazzing, democratic daugh- 
ters of High Finance and Synagogue. 

He is royal house of England, changing its family 
name in the face of the enemy; and the enemy swapping 
“von” for “van” and “de.” 

He is House of Lords become House of Commons, 
and House of Commons become House of Mobs. 

He is eighty-five democratic New York couples being 
married in a body by Deputy-Clerk James McCormick. 

He is chic sons and daughters, tangoing in chic 
casinos a week after their parent’s death, with wine- 
soaked, food-crammed, wiggling, piggling, democratic 
society unshocked. 

He is sanctified Chamber of Commerce, bluff, and 
bunkum; salon of motors; saloon of art; Rialto of 
religion; chapel of cinema; three ringed circus of prog- 
ress, civilization, and uplift; and Corridor of Fame 
crowded with dancers, pugilists, mountebanks, swash- 
bucklers, suffragettes and clowns. 

He is “arty” Zoo with musty dives and fusty cab- 
arets, packed with monkeys, donkeys, parrots and 
geese; all Dionysians and supermen, all psycho-analyt- 
ical geniuses of myriad complexes, and all chattering, 
braying, jibbering, honking, over new art, new thought, 
New Republic, free love, free verse, pure reason, pure 
science, pure socialism, pure rot; with Greenwich Vil- 
lage fur and “Rotundian” feather ruffling in contentious 
indignation at the very thought of comparing such 
antediluvian bourgeois as Phidias, Bach, Shakespeare, 

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and Leonardo with their “Big Six” or “Big Nine” 
super-apes of latest “ists” and ‘“‘isms.”? And this is 
what democratic education of the masses has done for 
buxom farmer lass, happy artisan lad and simple, hon- 
est country boy. 

He is unending chains of processional caterpillars, 
blindly following, with sentimental earnestness and 
weary step, Baedeker, Cook, and other leaders of 
“educational offensives” and “culture drives,” with hope 
of quickly returning home for the purpose of “putting 
it all over” the great mental unwashed, who have not 
yet been “Baedekered,” “Cooked,” seasoned and re- 
fined by European travel, and Encyclopedias of Soeial 
Etiquette showing one for a couple of dollars how to 
appear to be what one is not. 

He is pseudology, pseudoism; adulterated food, 
mocado stuffs, dicky shirt front, dicky social front, 
dicky house front, and all modern dicky fronts; com- 
position stone, artificial marble; counterfeit jewels, 
furs, lace, porcelain; faked “fold masters”; tricked 
antiquities, “near” fabrics, “‘simile” tissues, fraudulent 
remedies, humbug lotions, trumpery tonics, spurious 
art, science, religion; feigned faith, mimic happiness, 
kodaked grief; mock manner, gesture, grin; bunkum 
altruism; bluff, sham, deception, fraud, cheat, and— 
imitation corpses fabricated in a United States factory 
and shipped to Egypt to be sold as mummies to unsus- 
pecting tourists. 

He is (“by special cable to the Herald’) “Charles 
Mason, negro hod-carrier who, while on way to work, 
is arrested for speeding in his automobile.” 

He is democratized “Tribes of Osagian Indians, 
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gathering in Oklahoma for intertribal dances and ar- 
riving in expensive motor cars, piloted by drivers with 
silk shirts and top hats.” 

He is “Walrus and Carpenter” of business com- 
bines, trusts, monopolies and giant Democracies, 
“munchin’,” “crunchin’,” “punchin’,” and “gobblin’ ” 
up, for the sacred cause of progress, humanity and 
civilization, defenceless little oysters, while weeping 
briny tears of pity and compassionate love as they feel 
them slipping by their insatiate palates into capacious 
self-righteous maws. 

(Norr.—As a God-fearing man, I fully realize that 
‘to those who have shall be given”; but I resent seeing 
a luscious, goluptious meal guzzled up with Walrus, 
Carpenter, and democratic crocodile tears.) 

He is Coney Island, Broadway, Brighton, Atlantic 
City, Trouville, Ostend, and all the other “magic cities” 
of “looping the loop,” “bumping the bump,” and “flying 
the coop,” which are used as safety-valves for Democ- 
racy’s bursting boiler of morbid egotism, self-conscious- 
ness, brutality, and proselytizing vulgarity. 

He is debutante daughters and tea-pouring, jazzing, 
Einsteining mothers and grandmothers, from every 
city, town, village and hamlet; paragraphed and 
photographed in every newspaper, magazine and village 
weekly—and every one beautiful, popular, talented ; 
and every one charity worker and art connoisseur; and 
every one exclusive; and every one democratic, psychic 
and perfectly unaffected ; and every one a leader of the 
Smart Set; and all ultra modern, in new thought and 
new everything, including morals, houses, complexes, 
manners, husbands, auras, and—all living in mortal 

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fear of being called reactionary, undemocratic and un- 
scientific. 

He is philanthropist, munificently endowing public 
schools, hospitals and libraries, with mountainous 
profits from munition, armament, and _ poison-gas 
factories. 

He is Eileen Clossen and Sadie Palmer of Rochester, 
New York, fighting to a “knockout” with bare fists 
before five hundred spectators, for a Feminist who 
agreed to marry the winner of the bout. 

He is soulless science, democracy and merciless 
machinery, ousting faith, gentle manners, dignity, self- 
expression, self-respect, reverence, tradition, hearth- 
love, obedience, and natural class distinction based on 
tradition, culture, talent, power and wealth. 

He is ever-increasing herds of baffled, standardized, 
Taylorized, super-slaves, with engraved visiting cards 
of “Mr. and Mrs.” as reassuring symbols of democ- 
racy; repeating the same gesture from dawn of youth 
to sunset of age, and mumbling about liberty, self- 
determination and equality in unholy stinking factory 
hells of shrieking, grinding machinery, which whitman- 
ized, woolworthized, pullmanized, barnumized Mari- 
nettis, Stravinskys, Stanley Lees, Piccabias, Sand- 
burgs, Cocteaus, Tristan Tzaras, Stardales, Huelsen- 
becks, Wooly-West and Tenderloin idealists rant, 
rave, squeak and squawk over as Valhallas for super- 
men. 

He is Fifth Avenue, Euclid Avenue, Biarritz, New- 
port, Lake Shore Front, Baden-Baden, Dinard, May- 
fair, Cannes, Avenue du Bois, of cosmopolitan, stereo- 
typed, identicalized super-palace-hotel society, stuffing 
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and puffing with food, jewels and motors; dancing and 
prancing; bobbing and snobbing; gambling, rambling 
and scrambling after money, notoriety and titles, and 
—all democrats, optimists, altruists, idealists, parlour 
socialists, and impassioned lovers of the “poor down- 
trodden people.” 

He is Europe, weakened, corrupted, debauched, de- 
generated by democracy; placating and féting at Genoa 
and The Hague, for purely venal purposes, the vilest 
and most heinous traitors to humanity, who, under the 
fiendish hypocrisy of Bolshevistic altruism, glut and 
sate their pathological vanity and lust for personal 
power with the flesh and blood of their defenceless 
countrymen. 

He is sex-antagonism, pecking, clucking and scratch- 
ing for the hen vote, in revenge for unchivalric wooing 
by the commercialized gamecock, who, no longer daring 
to herald in the dawn with royal clarion call, timidly 
awaits the factory whistle, while trailing his tail plumes 
in dust of sex-equality and democratic hypocrisy. 

He is volcanic eruption of vanity and perverted ego- 
ism, burying honour, love, loyalty, friendship under 
Press and photographic lava of self-advertisement, self- 
exploitation and self-popularization. 

He is standardized conventionality, moral cowardice, 
mob sycophancy, posing as individuality, originality, 
moral courage and independence. 

He is bewildered bourgeois shocked and intimidated 
out of reason and pocket-book by fatuous folly, scien- 
tific tomfoolery, matter-of-coin viciousness, and calcu- 
lated obscenity, of bunko-steerers and voodoos in mod- 
ern art and literature. 


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He is the Topeka Kansas Journal, “running the 
Bible as a ‘snappy’ serial, with an instalment every 
day, and lively newspaper headings for every incident.” 

He is America, falsifying all human values, and 
factoryizing, vulgarizing, patronizing, charlatanizing, 
equalizing, hypnotizing, standardizing the world. 

He is bridge of scientific progression and spiritual 
retrogression, over which treacherous, sub-human, 
pitiless, satan-smiling shepherds are luring their be- 
foozled, bamboozled flocks into camouflaged slaughter- 
houses of Communism, despair, madness and horror. 

He is disappearance of mirth, sentiment, gladsome- 
ness, dream, melancholy, winsomeness, lyricism, purity, 
loveliness, spirituality, Colleonic majesty, grandeur, 
magnificence, serenity of countenance, nobility of man- 
ner, repose, dignity of gesture, sweetness of expression, 
gentleness, affection, humility, tenderness, refinement, 
elegance, romance, loyalty, chivalry, courtesy, leisure, 
tranquillity, mystery, honesty of purpose, simplicity, 
respect, naiveté, awe, wonder, charm, aloofness, pri- 
vacy, asceticism, individuality, moral courage. 

He is the blackest, most threatening and most un- 
holy cloud that has ever hung over humanity. 

Ezra P. Packer is—Democracy. 


Mrs. Ezra P. Packer 


Of medium height, elephantine, vigorous, buoyant, 
and around sixty years of age, with rubific-purple hair, 
brilliantly painted lps, and face thickly rouged and 
powdered. She creates the impression, with her roving, 
social, palace-hotel-corridor eye, of an entranced 
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medium being paraded before the footlights of fashion 
by the procurers and hypnotists of the Rue de la Paix, 
who have corseted, dyed, bedecked, bejewelled and 
crowned her with every cunning and artifice of their 
vanitied trades. 

She is the good naive sentimental type of American 
woman, born to swim in a pond but, having been swept 
by the rising flood of Packer millions into the sea of 
wealth and fashion, finds herself out of her depth and 
gasping for breath in desire to keep pace with her hus- 
band and daughter, and play the part expected of her 
by the world, newspapers and social magazines. 

The most momentous dawn of her life was when she 
awoke in her brand new monumental Louis Quinze bed, 
adorned with gilded wreaths, bow knots, and vicious 
little cupids, which she bought with Ezra in a great 
department store shortly after they had installed their 
“Louis Quinze back parlour” behind a high stoop 
brown stone front in Brooklyn’s most fashionable 
quarter. 

At the same time in their antimacassared sitting- 
room two porcelain cuspidors, elaborately decorated 
with flowers, doves and amorettes, were stationed on 
either side of the gas-log fireplace, and on the tasselled 
plush-covered mantel, between alabaster urns under 
glass containing wax flowers, was posed a bronze Venus 
of Milo, with a clock encircled in rhinestones set in 
her stomach, while Mr. Packer’s cherished large brass 
spittoon, which had occupied the place of honour on 
their previous hearth, was relegated, with crayon fam- 
ily portraits, a moth-eaten stuffed pug-dog with one 
remaining glass eye, an enormous conch-shell on which 

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was painted a nude woman clinging to a rock at the 
base of a tempest-swept lighthouse, and other out- 
grown treasures, to his bedroom. 

Having ascended into more exclusive social circles 
by the acquisition of this new “home,” Mrs. Packer 
gradually became aware of the necessity of educating 
herself and husband up to their new level of friends and 
furniture, and soon their evenings were spent in repeat- 
ing social catechisms from a widely read book on 
Etiquette, written by a retired French directress of a 
New York haute monde boarding-house in collaboration 
with an imported English ducal butler, who had en- 
riched himself as major-domo in the services of an 
American tin-can King. | 

After they had become initiated into the sacred 
rights and holy mysteries of what to do, wear and say 
in “highest society,” and had learned “how to dispose 
of cherry and grape stones; how to use the finger-bowl 
and napkin with the grace and ease that bespeak the 
supreme degree of culture; how to eat lettuce leaves 
and corn on the cob; how not to eat olives and radishes ; 
what to say without embarrassment on upsetting a 
demi-tasse; how to sneeze elegantly, discreetly smother 
a yawn, conceal a hiccough behind a delicately poised 
hand,” and innumerable other genteel accomplishments 
—they felt themselves sufficiently secure and equipped 
to begin their social campaign. 

About that time, the august Ward McAllister (who 
has more fundamentally influenced his country in the 
last half century than any other American, with the 
possible exceptions of P. T. Barnum, C. D. Gibson, 
Joseph Pulitzer, Walt Whitman and Edison) and his 
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Four Hundred were timidly beginning to tiptoe into 
the rising surf of Wagner and Browning, while the 
Paris Art Firm of Kougelman & Co., securely mounted 
on Schreier’s Arab horses and escorted by Charles 
Jacques’ pages, were scurrying up and down Fifth 
Avenue with Bougereau, Meissonier, and Henner in 
their train. 

It was not long, therefore, before Mrs. Packer recog- 
nized that these names were necessary shibboleths for 
further social progress. She consequently joined a 
Browning Society, and urged Mr. Packer to buy a 
Jacques court scene; and the following winter even 
ventured to have a Wagner class, which was arranged 
and organized by her French Professor, who had be- 
come a cicerone of culture to Brooklyn’s aristocracy 
after having changed his name from the Marquis of S. 
to the Count of A., and escaped from Paris, where he 
was wanted for various charges of swindling. 

Mr. Packer had now turned his first million-dollar 
buoy, and under full sail was headed for the open sea 
of millions. Their next social cruise landed them in a 
large double brown stone mansion, the decoration of 
which, with the exception of the two embossed silver 
cuspidors—now referred to as “expectoratoons”—was 
entirely left to the rare taste and discretion of the 
Count, who “did them up” in grand Louis Quinze style 
from top to bottom while “doing up” his own pocket- 
book with Louis Quinze commissions. 

The Packers again disposed of their latest set of 
friends and furniture, and assumed their new social 
duties, this time in “Brooklyn’s élite,” with a staff of 
servants, including an English butler, Swedish ‘“‘second 

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man,” negro “odd man,” French chef, Belgian lady’s 
maid, Irish coachman, Danish footman, Norwegian 
kitchenmaid, and German, Swiss and Italian house- 
maids. 

The Count, encouraged by his Packer windfall, was 
next heard of in Pittsburg, where he netted a million- 
airess, returned to Paris, silenced the police with his 
wife’s purse, became a deputy, and later a pillar of 
Ritzonian society. 

Shortly after this, Mrs. Packer realized that to be 
truly smart it was necessary to have a lover, and con- 
sequently set her teeth against her New England con- 
science in grim determination to be as fashionable as 
her newly acquired acquaintances. This was the most 
nerve-racking moment of her career; but she emerged 
from it triumphantly, with the complete satisfaction 
that she had complied with the exigencies of her new 
position, and had become a _ full-fledged society 
“Jubjub.” 


“As to temper the Jubjub’s a desperate bird, 
Since it lives in perpetual passion ; 
Its taste in costume is entirely absurd; 
It is ages ahead of the fashion.” 


In their third social offensive they stormed the 
Brooklyn Bridge and took possession of an enormous 
Georgian residence on Madison Avenue, built for them 
by a chic young American architect, who had recently 
returned from Paris, where he had been thoroughly 
Latin quartered and Beaux Arts-ed. The interior fur- 
nishings were carried out by a mundane decorator, who, 
as far as her relations with the “Louis” were con- 


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cerned, was perfectly pure; in fact ‘the Packers were 
finally so entirely overcome by her purity that they 
would proudly point out on every possible occasion 
their door-handles, telephones, gramophones, toilets, 
and back stairs to their new set of friends as being 
“absolutely pure Louis Seize.” The only impurities 
were the good Packers themselves, for even the cellar 
was de l’époque. 

Had it not been for the war, the Packers would have 
probably died in the arms of “pure Louis Seize” on 
the fringes of New York’s élite; but they were destined 
for still greater social glory. 

At the moment of this play we find them shaking off, 
in true democratic style, their Louis Seize connections, 
and making their fourth democratic move into a superb 
new palace covering an entire block on democratic 
Fifth Avenue. Their palace this time has _ been 
gothic-ed and renaissanced by perfect undemocratic 
Semitic taste into a veritable art museum. 


Miss Patricia Packer 


About twenty-five years of age, unusually tall and 
svelte, with a beautiful small Pre-Raphaelite head, ex- 
quisitely poised, like an exotic flower, on a long delicate 
neck. Her lithe, flat, aristocratically angular figure, 
with elongated limbs, slender high-arched feet and thin 
tapering fingers, give her an ethereal look of old race 
and rare distinction seldom seen even among the noblest 
families of Europe. She, like many American girls, is 
so startlingly dissimilar, both physically and mentally, 
to her parents, that one wonders, on seeing them to- 

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gether, if the family nest had not been surreptitiously 
visited by some royal mystical cuckoo while the old 
birds were out in fanatical pursuit of the early worm 
of wealth and social aggrandizement. 

After the Packers had received innumerable snubs 
on account of their ignorance and lack of social train- 
ing, they gradually realized the supreme importance of 
higher education and culture, and consequently deter- 
mined to have their daughter given every possible ad- 
vantage. They started therefore, from her earliest 
youth, to have her poor little head intensively stuffed 
and crammed with learning. 

After she had been passed through minds of innu- 
merable governesses, professors and instructors of 
music, singing, sculpture, dancing and drawing, and 
had attended every conceivable kind of perfecting and 
finishing class, her brain became like a grocery shop 
packed with predigested cultural foods, tabloids of 
religion, little tins of cold-storage art, extracts of 
philosophy, canned history, and compounds of science. 
These mental groceries she served out to her clients, 
after the fashion of American women, from behind her 
counter of knowledge and erudition, in neat little pack- 
ages, tied up with precise little bows, to the unending 
delight of her proud and awe-struck parents. 

At the age of seventeen Patricia Packer became 
secretly engaged to a young Brooklyn swell, whom she 
dropped (as her father did the cuspidor) for a New- 
port ‘“‘week-ender” when her parents moved from 
Brooklyn to New York. Her second engagement was 
also of short duration, as the Packers gradually dis- 
covered through T'own Gossip and officious friends that 
their daughter’s fiancé was only a “near” Newporter. 


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Her third venture was with an attaché of princely birth 
in the German Embassy. The war put a sudden end 
to this romance; her pangs of disappointment, how- 
ever, soon disappeared in intensive Red Cross work. 

The war came as a great blessing to Mrs. Packer 
and her daughter, who rapidly donated and hospitalled 
their way into medals, war decorations and the most 
restricted circles of New York and Paris society, while 
Mr. Packer was doubling fame and fortune in munition 
factories. 

For almost three years the Packer name appeared 
daily in the foreign Press—Miss Packer asking to have 
old shoes sent to her address, while her mother spe- 
cialized in shirts and underclothes for refugees. 

Miss Packer, who might have stepped out of the 
pages of Les Femmes Savantes, regards with critical 
eye the younger generation of American girls, who, she 
declares, “are rapidly being whirlpooled by decadence 
into mental and moral chaos.” 

She, like many chic, up-to-date young ladies of the 
‘exclusive set,” is an ardent Socialist and a disciple of 
Marx. It is hardly necessary to add that The New 
Republic, The Nation, The Masses, and The Freeman 
are always to be found on her boudoir table, where 
Freud, Einstein and an Encyclopedia of Pornography, 
entitled Ulysses, containing the insane obscenities used 


by certain unfortunate creatures in Bedlam,’ occupy 

1In The Dial, Ezra Pound declares: “This super-novel .. . 
has more form than any novel of Flaubert’s. ‘All men should 
unite to give praise to Ulysses’; those who will not may content 
themselves with a place in the lower intellectual orders.” Miss 
Patricia therefore extols Ezra, and deifies Joyce, who is now 
being superized by all of our super-critics. Rotundians, super- 
Ritzonians and Greenwichites hail him as a prophet; Syndicalists, 
Bolshevists and Bedlamites idolize him. 


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the place of honour. The latest foreign publications 
of Dadaists, Cubists, Fopists, Prigists, and Poppy- 
cockists are scattered about. Her mother, however, 
in spite of her daughter’s sneers, still surreptitiously 
clings to Town Topics and The Club Fellow. 

Over the mantel in her boudoir hangs one of Picca- 
bia’s most masterful pictures, The Insides of a Gatling 
Gun, which has replaced the famous painting of a 
gollywogging polyhogging lady by Matisse, whom 
Miss Packer considers to be “really rather too aca- 
demic.” 

Recently Miss Packer allowed herself to be dis- 
covered by several of her intimate friends seated before 
her Piccabia in tearful ecstasy over the latest volume 
of poems by “The Super Seven.” ‘This volume has been 
reviewed in innumerable magazines as “‘One of the most 
interesting symptoms in the whole literary world, and 
its publication is very nearly a public obligation.” It 
has even been recognized by the Rev. Percy Pant to be 
the apotheosis of poetical expression, and the Rey. 
Percy in his turn is recognized by the seven supermen 
authors to be the greatest critic in the history of world 
literature. The following poem is one of the most 
exquisite of the collection, and I believe it to be the 
one which brings tears of appreciation to Miss Packer’s 
eyes, and esthetic tremors to the Rev. Percy Pant :— 


Psychoanalytical Cockscombs 


pale anemic ascetic poles 
Telegraph poles 
seeking goals 
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Characters 


Phantasmagorically 
through pellucid 
Peri 


helions 

pervasive vacuousness of 

wires isochronously 

Vibrating to Virginal Vertigo 

goya Heliogabulous Red carnations 
blood for evermore Metadore 

Oh Christ of Triakisicosahedronic wounds 
Oh Andalusian harl 

ot 

god Nevermore Heartbroken 

Come Papilionaceously with 
Yellow leaf and black spots 
Western Union 

pale anemic ascetic poles 

Seeking goals 

Bleeding heart 


nevermore 


At the present moment the socialistic Miss Patricia 
is being mancuvred by her socialistic friend the 
Duchess of Mandelieu into a royal marriage with a 
cousin of the King of the Belgians. 


Oscar Cadman 


A tall, self-conscious, emaciated, sallowish, lantern- 
jawed young man about twenty-eight, with pale eyes, 
pale hair, and pale personality, into which he has 

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injected homeopathic doses of U.S.A. “pep” and 
“punch.” 

Although he was born with Scottish, Swedish, 
German and French blood in his veins, he has been so 
well stewed in the GREAT MELTING-POoT into a pure 
American type that he could be recognized a block off 
as one of “God’s own.” 

From the study of pamphlets and books, concocted 
in American laboratories of psychology, on new 
methods of obtaining success, he has acquired, among 
other accomplishments, the intensely earnest and 
virilely frank, buoyant, arrivist manner which we are 
assured in this optimistic literature—showing how any 
fool may transmute himself into a genius—inspires 
commercial confidence—the only confidence, by the 
way, apparently necessary in this epoch. 

He has, in truth, so successfully soaked himself in 
every form of scientific and democratic earnestness of 
manner, that he has become, like all democrats and 
modern scientists, painfully serious over nothing, even 
to the extent of putting religious fervour into his 
*“*how-do-do,” and fanatical sincerity into his “pleased 
to meet you,” which stereotyped greetings he invari- 
ably ‘‘gets off” on all introductory occasions with a 
second-class Rooseveltian ‘“‘he-man” hand-shake. 

Our women are also rapidly adopting this success- 
ful manner, which has already been carried into Europe, 
and is now being made most lucrative and advanta- 
geous use of by eager shop, financial, and casino folk 
of all nations. 

Among political stars, Lloyd George and Briand 
are excellent examples of it; but they and their con- 
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fraternity have been so influenced by the American 
domination that they even endeavour to tog and rig 
themselves up in proletarian masquerade of our Jeffer- 
sonian politicians, who for some time have realized the 
futility of bomb and cannon, and have now started out 
in grim earnest to Americanize humanity with Chris- 
tian, social and commercial suggestion-science, backed 
up by their already victorious armies of Press, ’phone, 
Ford, jazz, phonograph, cinema, kodak, palace-hotel, 
bill-board, baseball, canned-food, cold-storage, and 
every kind of hocus-pocus machine and rattle-trap in- 
vention. 

European politicians have not yet, however, quite 
arrived at the carefully studied democratic fancy dress 
of some of our Western members of House and Senate, 
who, with interchangeable masks of joviality and almost 
terrifying altruistic earnestness, realize the vast politi- 
cal and financial benefits derived from a shabby, greasy, 
humanitarian, humorous, valiant, brotherly-love, vote- 
catching slouch hat; an intellectually shiny, pater- 
familias, unadulterous, patriotic, Lincolnian, philo- 
sophically-fitting frock coat; honest, simple, virile, 
loyal, manly, shapeless, up-toed boots; baggy, opti- 
mistic, kind, generous, good-natured, industrious, sen- 
timental old pants; an unbuttoned, affectionate, royal- 
good-fellow, plain-people, normalcy, public-servant 
waistcoat; and frayed linen, washed with domestic 
economy, and glazed with irons of civic virtue. 

At the time of America’s entrance into the war 
Oscar was a senior in Cornell University, where he had 
been sent from a small farm in the Middle West by 
his sweat-of-the-brow hard-working parents who, by 

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giving their son a college education, fulfilled their most 
cherished dream. 

Oscar soon began to simmer and sizzle with war 
fever. He finally ignited, burst into flame, and was 
among the first flock of Majors to arrive in Paris at 
the moment when all Americans living in France were 
blossoming into maple leaves, acorns, Sam-Browns and 
spurs, although the only horses they had seen for years 
were equestrian statues in bronze and marble, and their 
knowledge of cannon was limited to ancient trophies 
in front of the Invalides, which was as near as most of 
them ever got to the front (the Author included). 
The only person who could probably give a satisfac- 
tory answer as to why our Knights of Aeroplane, Red 
Cross and Christian Associations wore spurs, is the 
White Knight in Alice in Wonderland. 

It was a bitter blow and cruel disappointment to 
Oscar’s parents when he returned in khaki to his little 
home town to bid them farewell before leaving for the 
front, and even harsh words were exchanged between 
them. Oscar declared that his parents were too mate- 
rial, ignorant and uneducated to understand the neces- 
sity of “making the world safe for democracy,” of 
“saving civilization” and of “waging a war of right 
over might to end wars.” 

‘Your ma and me ain’t got no book learnin’,” re- 
torted his old Scandinavian father, “but if this higher 
education stuff fills your poor head with such darn 
silly, rotten reasons as that for fightin’, ve’re sorry 
ve’ve chucked our hard-earned savin’s into the gutter 
in givin’ it to you. And to think I voted for Vilson 
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yust because he vas ‘too proud to fight,’ and vas going 
to keep us out of this filthy var of poison gases.” 

On the day of Oscar’s departure, however, the family 
unity was re-established by a brass band, waving flags, 
alcohol, and shouting townsmen, who proudly escorted 
their Major to the train. After this patriotic send-off, 
his old parents returned home with tears of joy and 
pride, and that evening the Stars and Stripes floated 
over their farm. 

On the same day that Oscar arrived on a transport 
at Bordeaux, fired and impassioned with the holy cause 
of crusading democracy, Boukané Fall, an African 
negro, whose entire family, along with most of the 
natives of his peace-loving agricultural village, had 
been scientifically wiped out by European democracy, 
was landed at Marseilles with a contingent of midnight 
blacks, who had been conscripted to defend the sacred 
cause of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” and “right 
over might,” and thoroughly palavered and “propa- 
ganded” with such slogans as “fa war to end wars,” 
and “to make the world safe for the blacks.” They 
were also informed that they were to save democracy, 
science and civilization from blood-drinking, man- 
eating Huns, the most terrible enemies of Mahomet and 
worshippers of a colossal statue in Berlin representing 
a monstrous green war devil. But as Boukané had not 
been given the advantage of mass education, he was 
too pitifully ignorant to appreciate the impassioned 
truth and inspired altruism of the above doctrines 
which Oscar, on the contrary, owing to his university 
training, was immediately enabled to accept as gospel. 

But as we hear from all sides that time is money, and 


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not wishing to rob our busy, buzzy, telephoned, motored, 
transatlanticized, wirelessed, subwayed, commuted, 
jazzed, standardized, culture-stuffed, Baedekered, news- 
papered, magazined, palace-hoteled, psycho-analyzed, 
super-hygiened, phonographed, cinemad, rushed, hus- 
tled, bustled, tussled readers of both,’ we will condense 
Oscar into the following capsule:—Our hero emerged 
from the war with flying colours, returned to New 
York, looked for a job, and, “not being a business 
coward,” invested in success-literature, thereby “in- 
creasing his mental stature with the secret of fifteen 
minutes a day”; learned the “cultured, correct way of 
how to behave in every embarrassing situation”; “how 
the newsboy became a great inventor and multimillion- 
aire”; “how to write short stories that actually sell 
themselves, and movie stories for big pay’; “how not 
to displease a purchasing agent with halitosis”; “why 
Jones missed his great chance”; “how to pronounce 
such foreign words as chic, lingerie, faux-pas, cabaret, 
Carpentier, Dostoyevsky, Landru, Baudelaire, demi- 
tasse, demi-monde, demi-vierge, demt-castor, and all the 
other demis’; “how to exhibit distinction and high 
breeding by correct, elegant introductions”; “how to 
be cultivated by everyone in the Smart Set of your 
home town”; “how to give wonderful parties, which 
unfrazzle nerves and tickle people pink’; “Show to de 
velop word power’; “‘how to sell through speech”; 
“how to impress others with your bed-rock character” ; 
‘show to read, love, think, live and make binding friend- 
ships on wasteless principles”; “how to be nominated 


1“Happiness consists in leisure,” wrote Aristotle. Socrates 
praised leisure as the fairest of all possessions. 


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for the Hall of Fame’’; and, in fact, “how to become 
one of America’s snappy geniuses.” 

Unlike Jones, who missed his great chance through 
psychological ignorance of the “smile and manner 
which carry conviction,” Oscar, when the opportunity 
to make good was offered to him by Packer, knew how 
to return “the smile of fortune,” and “grasp the big 
job with the manner that spells success.” 


Patrick Mulligan Sweeny, Mayor of New York 


A bulky, bald-headed, short-legged, penguin-built 
man of medium height, in the middle forties, with glit- 
tering, watchful, pin-head eyes sunk into the gristly 
fat of a bulbous, formless, smooth-shaven, pasty face. 
He has the sly, sardonic, predatory smile of certain 
amphibia and deep-sea monsters, who camouflage them- 
selves for defensive and offensive purposes into floating 
logs, or barnacled rocks, or lumps of mud. In like 
manner does our good Mayor Sweeny, under camou- 
flage of hearty handshake, hail-fellow-well-met, and 
democratic bluff and bluster, gulp up votes from his 
unsuspecting quarry. On oratorical occasions he 
exudes altruism* from every pore and squirts out 

1I never fully appreciated the heroic unselfishness of our 
political altruists who have consecrated their lives to the uplift 
of humanity until I came across the following passage wherein 
Mr. Pecksniff informs us that he even digests his food for the 
benefit of his fellow men. “The process of digestion,” declares 
this altruistic utilitarian, “is one of the most wonderful works 
of nature ... it is a great satisfaction to me to know, when 
regaling on my humble fare, that I am putting in motion the 


most beautiful machinery with which we have any acquaintance. 
I really feel at such times as if I was doing a public service. 


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obsequious flattery over his constituents and brother- 
citizens, whom in his democratic heart he despises. 

For his sisters he has a softer spot. After the above 
description of him in the flesh, it may surprise and even 
“‘discomboberate”’ some of my more sentimental readers 
to know that he has always had amazing success with 
the “lovely ladies” of all ages, and in all classes of life, 
whom apparently he fascinates with his brutal, bully- 
ing, “‘he-man” manner. Although an anti-feminist at 
heart, he is careful to conceal from the public his true 
sentiments concerning women, realizing the necessity 
of working up the blarney bunkum of sex-equality, in 
order to catch the woman’s vote. 

He is in a way the modern Don Juan, and owes his 
prosperity in great measure to his biological knowledge 
and understanding of the weaknesses of the fair sex, 
who always succumb to the successful, triumphant male 
symbolizing the spirit of their time: in days of chivalry 
it was Knight-Errant and Troubadour; in religious 
periods it was Crusader; in the Renaissance and other 
art epochs it was Artist; in war it was Warrior; and 
in our commercial democratic age of machine, bill- 
board, and laboratory it is Sweeny. This twentieth- 
century Lothario looks as if he might have been ex- 
tracted with triple nickel-plated, patented forceps from 
the womb of a boiler; suckled from the brass teats of 
an automatic slot-machine; cradled in a taxi side-car; 
brought up on canned and artificial food in a machine 
shop; educated by the venal brutal daily Press in fac- 


When I have wound myself up, if I may employ such a term, and 
know that I am going, I feel that in the lesson afforded by the 
works within me, I am a benefactor to my kind,.”—DicxKEns, 


124 


Characters 


tories decorated by mountebank Cubists and worked by 
standardized Union slaves. At present he is living on 
the thirtieth floor of a super-palace hotel overlooking a 
world of glass, steel, concrete and bristling factory 
spires belching forth the black scientific soot of demo- 
cratic fraud and imitation. 

Shortly after his “lovely cousin”—now the Duchess 
of Mandelieu—left him to marry old Blumenberg, he 
corralled a well-to-do widow and, as he put it, “‘cinched 
her up as Mrs. Sweeny.” After having increased his 
wife’s fortune tenfold through judicious police-graft- 
ing, he was rich enough to afford the luxury of being 
moderately honest as Mayor. 

His brilliant career was, however, very nearly cut 
short at one time by an intrigue he was carrying on 
with a famous beautiful leader of the Suffragettes, 
whose husband, a conspicuous New York clubman, com- 
mitted suicide on surprising his wife with the Mayor— 
not in platonic dalliance, but in flagrante delicto. It 
took all Mayor Sweeny’s ingenuity and political pull 
to have it conclusively proven in the Press, by accom- 
modating neurologists and psychiatrists, that he was 
in no way responsible for the suicide, as the husband 
was a victim of hallucinations and suffered from per- 
secution mania. 

In vicissitude and success Pat’s instinctive respect, 
devotion, consideration and generosity for his old 
mother have been unfailing. He also has the open- 
handed liberality and lavish hospitality rarely, if ever, 
met with outside of the United States, except possibly 
among Russians and South Americans. 

To-day, “P.M.,” as he is affectionately dubbed in 

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New York, is worth several million dollars, and is one 
of the most highly esteemed and respected Mayors New 
York City has ever had. 

An heroic-size statue of him is at the present moment 
being executed by a beautiful young American sculp- 
tress, who is already infinitely more celebrated than 
Michelangelo ever dreamed of being. 

This monument, to which “P.M.” was the principal 
subscriber, is shortly to be erected in his home town of 
Squeedunk by a committee of proud citizens, who have 
been so impressed by the political triumphs and Press 
notoriety of their former townsman, that they have all 
endeavoured to pattern themselves on him; some imi- 
tating his manner and gesture, others his speech, and 
all swapping stories of their good old school days when 
“Patsey Sweeny was one of the boys.” All of which is 
rather odd, as he was the most detested boy who ever 
attended the Squeedunk High School, and for years 
was known as “Stinker Pat.’? We feel sure, however, 
that the Beaver and the Butcher, who were members 
of the “Bellman’s crew,” would have found nothing 
surprising in the above situation. 


And now—‘make way! the play may begin.” 
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ACT I 


A garden close in Normandy, in the late afternoon of 
a sunlit Summer day, 1919. To left ts a pictur- 
esque, two-storeyed seventeenth-century cottage, 
vine-covered, with overhanging eaves. It is of 
greyish-pink stucco, beautifully patined by time 
and weather with glazings of ochres and cool 
bluish-greys. 

The wing of the cottage runs diagonally across 
left rear corner, forming an oblique angle with the 
high lichen-covered stone wall which encloses the 
garden and separates it from the high road. In 
the wall to right rear is a low, narrow, arched 
entrance, closed by a solid oaken door studded 
with large square nail heads, and hung on heavy 
decorative iron hinges. 

To the right is a long low out-building over- 
grown with wy. It has a studio window, and door 
leading into garden. 

In the centre is an ancient stone well-head of 
Renaissance design, mounted on two great weather- 
beaten stone slabs, forming steps. The well-head 
is crowned with a fine old wrought-iron framework, 
from which is suspended a wheel with chains for 
bucket. Encircling the well are large irregular 
mossy paving stones, with grass and an occasional 
little flower sprouting from the interstices. 

Along the walls run flower-borders, bright with 
roses, lupins and lavender. On either side of gar- 
den gate are two centenarian yews, neatly clipped 

127 


128 


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in pyramid form. A wise old spreading elm rises 
in left foreground. Around its base is a rustic 
bench, near which there is a table and several 
rattan garden chairs with chintz cushions. 

The only discordant note to the calm peaceful 
dignity and refinement of this lovely fragrant old- 
world corner is a hideous, flamboyant bill-poster, 
erected in a field on the other side of the high 
road, and dominating both house and garden. In 
the hills beyond, other garish signboards are seen. 
On the one just over the wall is painted an enor- 
mous head of “Loyal Painless Thompson,” uni- 
versally celebrated for his cathartics. His mean, 
unscrupulous, lantern-jawed, chalky jackal face 
seems to be leering with contemptuous superiority 
out of the modern world of charlatanism, sham 
and militant vulgarity, into the gentle, secluded, 
spiritual refienment of the past. On a glaring 
blue background, in gigantic blazing yellow let- 
ters, which strike you like a blow between the eyes, 
and from which there is no possible escape, ts 
written: “Loyal Painless Thompson’s luscious 
little Lollipops for lazy languid Livers.” And 
below is the following slogan in both French and 
English:—“We work while you dream”; “Nous 
travaillons pendent que vous revez.” As no de- 
scription in these days is complete without at 
least one “‘super,” I might add that “Loyal Paim- 
less Thompson’s” face is charged with super- 
vulgarity and falseness. His daughter, too, is 
charged with super-cheek and chic, having mar- 
ried Prince Gigolo Gogo, whose mother was Miss 





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Vogelheim of St. Louis, daughter of the famous 
philanthropist and democratic king of “Vogel- 
heim’s Vitaphospho Varieties.” 

Before curtain rises, a few long mournful notes 
of a flute are heard. The scene opens with JouHn 
Brown seated in right foreground in front of 
easel, wearing along white artist blouse. He con- 
tinues to sound a few more notes on his flute, and 
then, laying it aside, takes up palette and brushes, 
and begins to paint. On the ground there are 
several small canvases leaning against his chair. 


Mrs. Brown—[Appearing in cottage window.| 
John, dear, how is the picture getting on? 

JoHn—Not very well, mother. Some days it’s so 
difficult. 

Mrs. Brown—Don’t fret over it, dear boy. [ Aside, 
with expression of sorrow, and eyes uplifted.| Ah, my 
poor child! My poor boy! [Disappears from win- 
dow. | 

Joun—[Dreamily.| If father were only here. He 
was the only one who could show me how. He always 
used to say: “Now, John, don’t get discouraged, and 
keep your mind on your picture, and some day you will 
be a great painter.”” I wonder why God took him and 
my little cousin Marie away. I loved my little cousin 
Marie somuch. She was so kind, and liked my pictures. 
She promised to marry me when I became a man. It 
takes so long to become a man. Perhaps I shall never 
become one now. I always think of her at this time, 
before the sun begins to go away. 

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[On road behind garden wall an automobile 
comes to a sudden stop and voices are heard. | 

First Man’s Votce—Damn the tyres, the dust, the 
Virgin, art, and everything! 

Szeconp Man’s Vorce—What wouldn’t I give for a 
cup of tea! 

First Man’s Vortcr—Let’s look in here. There must 
be a restaurant somewhere. 

[Clambering sounds are heard, and the heads 
of Isaac Koucretman and JosepH RosENGARTEN, 
wearing Red Cross army caps and automobile 
goggles, appear above high garden wall. They 
have evidently found something on which to 
mount. | 

KovcreLmMan—There’s a chap painting in the corner. 

RosENGARTEN—|[Suppressed voice.| Be careful! 
don’t let them see you. They’re awfully cranky about 
their privacy over here. We’re not in America, you 
know. 

KovucretmMan—Privacy! How about their public 
urinals? ‘That’s where privacy ought to be—in toilets, 
not in gardens! We don’t need walls in God’s own 
country. 

RosENcARTEN—The only privacy in America is in 
jails and asylums. [Seeing servant, they vanish sud- 
denly. | 

E.teN—[Appears on threshold of house, just in 
time to see the two heads disappear. With strong Irish 
brogue.| Americans sure! [Bell rings; she goes to 
open gate. | 

RosENGARTEN—|T'o Evuten.| Pardon, est-ce qu’il 
y a un restaurant dans le village? 

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Eiiren—lIf it’s a ristaurant you’re after wantin’, 
there’s none before you get to Belleville, about two 
miles along the high road. 

RosENGARTEN—Oh, I see! We’re looking for a cup 
of tea somewhere, while the chauffeur changes the tyre. 

KouceLMAN—We’ve just had a blow-out. 

Mrs. Brown—[Appearing on doorstep.| Ellen, 
what is it? 

ELLen—Two gintlemen, mum, asking for a ristorant. 
It’s busted their motor is, and they’re after a coop of 
tea. 

Mrs. Brown—[T'o gentlemen.]| Oh! Vm afraid 
you won’t get any tea in this little village; but won’t 
you wait in the garden? 

KovcetmMan—| Entering garden, followed by Rosrn- 
GARTEN.| That’s very kind! We’ve just burst a tyre. 

RosENGARTEN—What a lovely garden, and this little 
cottage—seventeenth-century, I should say. It’s most 
artistic. 

Mrs. Brown—My husband was an artist. 

RosENGARTEN—Oh, an artist! Is that your hus- 
band painting over there? [Looking towards Joun.| 

Mrs. Brown—[Embarrassed.| No—no, that’s my 
son. He—he—— 

RosENGARTEN—I’d so much like to see his canvas. 
[He starts to walk towards Joun. | 

KouceLMan—|Ingratiatingly.| We’re artists too, 
you know. 

RosENGARTEN—Well—hardly artists, but art lovers. 

Mrs. Brown—[T'roubled and confused.| Oh, you 
see—eh—well, you see—my son, he’s not very well— 
er—he’s never quite grown up—you understand. We 

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encourage him to paint—it’s the best distraction—and 
he seems to love it, the poor child. John, these gentle- 
men want to look at your picture. 

JoHn—[Who has remained oblivious to strangers 
looks up from work.| Yes, mother. [With sudden 
burst of childish enthusiasm.| You see, those are all 
trees marching along the river, for trees march, you 
know, up and down hill, like soldiers. And over here is 
the tree that is leading them, because he is so much 
older, and knows so much more. 

RosENGARTEN—|As if he were speaking to a little 
child.| I understand, my dear boy. He is the father 
tree, isn’t he? 

Joun—| Eagerly picking up another canvas.| Yes! 
Yes! and here is a picture with father in it. And these 
are the steps winding up to God, and flowers are all 
over everywhere. And you see up on the top of the 
steps is my little cousin Marie. And there is father 
looking out of the window. 

Mrs. Brown—| Under her breath.| Poor child! 

RosENGARTEN—Yes, of course; it’s very good, it’s 
very good indeed! I love pictures. 

Joun—Do you make pictures too? 

RosENGARTEN—No, we don’t make pictures; we 
make artists. [Glances at KoucELMAN. | 

Kovucretman—|[Under his breath.| I should say 
we did! 

JoHun—My father said I would be a great artist 
some day if I worked hard. 

RosENGARTEN— Yes, you will surely be a great artist 
some day, my dear boy. <A great artist—a great 
artist. [He puts hand to forehead as if suddenly 
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struck by an idea. Aside, with suppressed excitement. | 
By Jove! A great artist! Why not? [He then starts 
to pace up and down in deep meditation. Joun re- 
sumes painting. | 

Koucrtman—|[T'o Mrs. Brown:| What a fortu- 
nate distraction for him, madam. 

Mrs. Brown—Yes. I encourage him in it, as it 
makes him so happy. Perhaps you and your friend 
would like to have tea here in the garden? 

KoucrELmMan—You are really too hospitable. 

Mrs. Brown—Oh no, not at all! [Calling:] Ellen! 
Ellen! [Exien appears.| Bring tea for these two 
gentlemen, and buttered scones and toast. 

E.ten—[F rom doorway:| Yes, mum, right away. 
[Aside:] ’Tis Americans have a way with ’em to get 
what they want. 

KoucetmMan—lI am truly embarrassed by such kind- 
ness, madam. J.R., we’ve been invited to tea by this 
most hospitable lady. 

RosENGARTEN—| Awakening as out of a dream.| To 
tea! To tea! Oh, how gracious of you; how very 
gracious, madam! [Relapses into abstraction, and 
continues nervously pacing up and down, with occa- 
stonal swift glances at Joun. | 

KoucreLMan—|[T'o Mrs. Brown:] So you’ve been 
living here a long time? 

Mrs. Brown—For over thirty years. 

Kovucretman—A long time indeed; but it’s such a 
lovely place, and the village and everything is so 
picturesque. 

Mrs. Brown—My husband loved it here. He hated 
big towns and cities. 

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KoucELMAN—I can understand that, of course, as 
he was an artist. But, not being French, don’t you 
find it a trifle lonely? 

Mrs. Brown—Ah, no! I couldn’t think of living 
elsewhere. We were so happy here. My husband was 
such a wonderful character. And now I live in the 
memory of it all. 

KovucELMAN—Have you been a widow long? 

Mrs. Brown—Fifteen years. He left us fifteen years 
ago, and everything is just as it was then. 

E..ten—|Re-entering with tea-tray, on which are 
cups, saucers, etc.|—-Where shall I set the tea, mum? 

Mrs. Brown—You can put it over there on the 
little table, Ellen. [Z'’o Kovcruman:] She is such a 
faithful old woman; she has been with us all these 
years. 

KoucELMAN—So rare in these days. 

Mrs. Brown—| Addressing RosENcARTEN, who has 
stopped for a moment and is silently watching JoHN 
paint:| My son’s pictures amuse you? 

RosENGARTEN—| With almost stern seriousness. | 
They do, madam. I’m profoundly interested, most pro- 
foundly interested. 

Kovucetman—|[T'o himself.| What’s the matter 
with him?—walking up and down like that and every- 
thing. 

Mrs. Brown—[T'o Kovucetman.| Your friend has 
a kind heart. 

KovucrtmMan—Yes, he certainly has. He’s an 
extraordinary man. 

Mrs. Brown—Perhaps you would like to see some 
of my husband’s pictures? 

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KovucretMan—lI would indeed! Did he paint land- 
scapes? 

Mrs. Brown—Yes. They are so beautiful. Unfor- 
tunately I have only a few. Will your friend come too? 

KovcrLtMan—J.R., we’re going in to see the pic- 
tures. 

Rosencarten—|[Still circling about Joun.| Tl 
come inaminute. Yes 

KoucetmMan—|T'o himself.| He’s getting cracked 
too; it’s the atmosphere. 

Mrs. Brown—My poor child loves to show his pic- 
tures. It’s so pathetic. 

KoucELMan—It must be a great sorrow 

Mrs. Brown—lIt really killed my husband. He 
grieved over it so when he finally realized. [They 
disappear into house. | 

RosENGARTEN—|T'o Joun.| You’ve done lots of 
these pretty pictures? 

Joun—| Still painting.| Oh yes, lots and lots. 

RosENGARTEN—And where are they all? 

JoHNnN—Over there in father’s studio. That’s my 
play-room, you know. It’s all covered with pictures. 
Mother lets me keep them all. 

RosencarteN—And what do you play at over 
there? 

JoHnN—Oh, I play at making pictures all day long. 

RosencartEN—And do your friends like your pic- 
tures? 

Joun—lI have no friends. My pictures and my flute 
are my friends. In the village they call me “pawvre 
fou.” ‘That means “poor fool.” Mother says French 
people always call foreigners fools. 








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RosENcARTEN—What a wise mother you have. 

JoHun—I love my mother dearly. She gives me all 
the paint and canvases I want to catch my dreams 
with. Do you dream of butterflies, and angels, and 
clouds, and flowers, and Jesus, too? 

RosENGARTEN—Yes, my dear boy; and I’m having 
a wonderful dream now—the most wonderful dream 
I’ve ever had—and you are to make it come true. You 
will help me make it come true, won’t you? [Gently 
pats Joun’s head. | 

JoHn—Shall I paint a picture of your dream? 

RosENGARTEN—Yes, many, many pictures of my 
dream; and then it will all come true. 

JoHun—Is that a picture of your dream on your 
sleeve? 

RosENGARTEN—The torch! No, that’s a picture of 
a dream of the Young Men’s Christian Association. 
It’s the torch of Light and Truth, to bring happiness 
wherever we go. 

Joun—Is that why you came in here to-day, to 
bring happiness to us all? 

RosENGARTEN—Yes, that’s why we came in here 
to-day. And I shall begin by being your friend, your 
big, kind friend; and we will play at making pictures 
together. 

JoHun—And will you dress me like a soldier of happi- 
ness, so that everyone may see that I do good, like 
your 

RosencarteEN—|[Faintly smiling.| Yes, my dear 
John, we will dress you as a soldier of Art, and you 
will become my great soldier, and win many battles 
and medals. 


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JoHn—With guns and cannons? 

RosENGARTEN—No, with pictures, your pictures. 
And when you are not making pictures we’ll go and see 
all sorts of wonderful things together—gardens of 
beautiful flowers, and rooms and rooms of pictures; 
and we will go to circuses and see the elephants and 
giraffes, and spotted tigers, and roaring lions, and 
horses jumping through hoops of fire. 

Joun—[Delighted.| Oh, I love the circus! My 
mother always takes me to Belleville when it comes. 

RosENcARTEN—But that’s only a little village circus. 
The great big circus is in Paris, That’s where our 
battlefield will be. Wouldn’t you like to go to Paris 
with me? 

J oHN—|Decisively.| My mother wouldn’t let me. 

RosEencartEN—I think I can make your mother say 
yes. But do take me into the play-room. I want to 
see all your lovely pictures. Does it take you long to 
make a picture? 

JoHn—|[Putting aside brushes and getting i 
Sometimes it takes me a long time, but when I feel 
that father is near me, and I hear his voice, I do them 
very quickly. My play-room is here. [They disappear 
into studio, right. | 

ELLEN—| While preparing tea has overheard conver- 
sation between RosENGARTEN and Joun.| Now what’s 
he a-goin’ in there with my poor boy for? And what’s 
all this about circuses, and pictures, and soldiers of 
happiness? ‘Them is no real soldiers or me name ain’t 
Ellen. Them is just play soldiers. °*Tis queer and 
nervous-like they make me feel. Me sister Bridget, 
what lives in the States, has been writin’ me this many 


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a year that we’re all dead and buried over here, and 
that America’s a grand place. She’s married to a fine 
policeman of the Auld Countree, and she says us Irish 
runs New York. I would have jined her if it hadn’t 
been for the master. I can hear him a-sayin’ now: 
“Ellen, keep away from America. Them is a danger- 
ous people. They fill your pockets with gold, and 
steal away your soul and peace of mind, like the divil 
himself.”? And sure they did divil the life out of the 
master just afore he died, with their sign-boards in 
the field yonder. “That’s America,” says he, ‘‘a-blottin’ 
out God’s own heaven with their dirty signs of soaps 
and hair tonics and pills. American propaginda, mak- 
ing you think you’ve got a pain in your innards, or 
having you lie awake a’ nights afeard of losin’ every 
blessed hair on your head unless you buy their nasty 
stuff.” Sure! and I'll never forget the day when the 
master found one of them there “We work while you 
dream” bottles in me kitchen drawer, which I bought 
in Belleville. ‘‘Damn it!” says he, a-shootin’ flames 
from his eyes. ‘‘How dare you bring this into my 
house! I thought you had more character than to let 
yourself be caught by that pop-eyed, grinnin’ idiot 
on the sign.” ‘It was stronger than me, sor,” says 
I. “From every window I sees that face, and all day 
long I sees it, by moonlight and sunlight and starlight, 
and when I begins to see ‘Loyal Painless Thompson’ 
a-smilin’ at me in me dreams, ‘Ellen,’ says I to meself, 
‘there’s no use a-fightin’ agin it; buy his bottle of 
luscious little lollipops for lazy livers and be done with 
it. ? “Good God!” says the master, flingin’ the pills 
through the window, “America has us by the throat 
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and is a-marchin’ in upon us with factories, sign- 
boards, cinemas, and their blackmailin’ Press, and all 
their other dirty contraptions and inventions of Satan 
himself.” . . . [Her curiosity leads her towards the 
studio door, which has been left open. Peeping in.]| 
Still lookin’ at my poor lamb’s pictures, all full of 
ghosty flowers and spooky trees. God bless his poor 
crazy brain! And little black scarecrows, what he 
calls his father, a-peepin’? at us from heaven, along 
with poor little Miss Marie, the only playmate he ever 
had, a-squattin’ on a sort of pinky cloud. 

| Re-enter Mrs. Brown from house with Kov- 

GELMAN, who is holding a letter. | 

Mrs. Brown—Ellen, is tea ready? 

E.Lten—|[Startled.| Yes, mum. It’s all on the 
table, mum. 

Mrs. Brown—Where is Master John? 

Ex.ten—He’s taken the gintleman into the play- 
room. 

Mrs. Brown—[T'o Kovcetman.| My poor child 
seems to have taken a great fancy to your friend. He 
never asks anyone into his play-room. 

Kovucretman—Really! [Earnestly.| You know, 
Mrs. Brown, I’m astounded by your husband’s pic- 
tures. What tonality! His composition is superb. 
And this letter to your husband from such a celebrity 
as Mr. Simonds! 

Mrs. Brown—He was such a sincere character too. 

KoucELMAN—Simonds was admitted to be the great- 
est art critic of the century. 

Mrs. Brown—I know he was. He was a great friend 
of ours. 


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KovcrtmMan—Why is it, with such appreciation as 
that, and the beauty of your husband’s pictures, that 
I never heard of him? It’s great art; he was a great 
artist. 

Mrs. Brown—Mr. Simonds wrote it just before he 
died, when my husband was preparing a large exhibi- 
tion of his works in Paris. My husband had a horror 
of the Salon; the only salon of the day, he said, was 
the Automobile Salon. In fact he had withdrawn 
from all art circles. For years he allowed no one to 
see his pictures. He was afraid of being cheaply cop- 
ied before he had made his reputation. You can see 
how entirely individual his work is. 

KoucretMan—Most original! Most creative! But 
what has become of all his pictures? 

Mrs. Brown—Ah! that was what I was going to 
tell you. It was all so tragic, so very tragic! He had 
shipped his entire exhibition to a friend’s studio, and 
a few days before they were to be sent to the gallery 
the studio and everything was burned. 

Kovucr~tMAN—What a tragedy! What a terrible 
loss to art! 

Mrs. Brown—All I have left are the pictures you 
have seen. This loss really hastened his death, as he 
had already made himself ill grieving over our son. 

KovucetmMan—How cruel life can be! 

Mrs. Brown—Art for him was sacred; it was his 
life; and the modern spirit was a nightmare to him. 

KovcreLtMan—There is certainly much ugliness in 
the modern spirit, but we must have progress, I sup- 
pose. 

Mrs. Brown—[Smiling.] Progress! How my poor 
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husband hated that word! That’s the word the Mayor 
of Belleville used when my husband tried to remove 
these appalling advertising signs from this lovely little 
village. What a blight they are! 

KovcretmMan—But didn’t the mayor try to help 
your 

Mrs. Brown—Unfortunately not. We discovered 
that a French chef, who had made his fortune in 
America, had taken the mayor into partnership with 
him in a local advertising company. 

KovucrtMan—| Facetiously.| Your mayor might be 
called the nightmare of Belleville! 

Mrs. Brown—That would have amused my husband. 
You wouldn’t believe how the sentiment of the country- 
side has changed since that chef returned from 
America. ; 

Kovucrtman—lI can well believe it. 

Mrs. Brown—The peasants have all been spoiled 
by the cinema and dance hall he started in Belleville. 
The young people are debauched by it. They used to 
be so simple and polite. Now they are pretentious and 
rude. The chef laughed them out of their sabots and 
pretty caps. 

KovucrtmMan—I suppose he thought them undemo- 
cratic. 





Mrs. Brown—Yes. On Sundays now you see them 
in feather hats and high heels. 
Kovcrtman—I'm afraid you have a bad opinion of 
us Americans. 
Mrs. Brown—[Slightly embarrassed.| Oh, excuse 
me; I did not realize you were an American. ‘They 
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must be a wonderful people. Every nation, I think, 
has its good points as well as its bad ones. 

KovucELMAn—Of course! Of course! 

Mrs. Brown—But, being an American, it surprises 
me to see how much interested you are in art. 

Kovcretman—Art! But that’s my lfe’s work. I 
live for art. | 

Mrs. Brown—[Surprised.| You do? 

KovceLMan—|Ostentatiously taking card from 
gold-bordered, monogrammed alligator-skin card-case. | 
May I give you my card? Perhaps you’ve heard of 
me, as my galleries are so well known in Paris, New 
York and London. 

Mrs. Brown—[ Reading card.| Isaac Kougelman! 
Why, is that the Kougelman Gallery? 

KovcetmMan—|[With patronizing, _ self-satisfied 
smile.| Quite so! 

Mrs. Brown—I remember my husband took me there 
many years ago to see a collection of Watteau’s draw- 
ings. So you are Mr. Kougelman? 

KoucrtmMan—Yes. My grandfather started the 
firm. 

Mrs. Brown—Oh! that’s such a well-known name in 
art. Is your friend associated with you? 

KoucretmMan—Yes; he’s a great connoisseur. He is 
known everywhere in the art world as “J.R.” His 
name is Joseph Rosengarten. Perhaps you have heard 
of him? Everyone knows J.R. 

Mrs. Brown—No. But since my husband’s death 
I have lived so much out of the world 

KovucetmMan—He has a wonderful intuition and 
flair. He has discovered many of the greatest artists 
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and poets of the day and helped to make them famous. 
Mrs. Brown—He must be a very clever man. But, 
Mr. Kougelman, I’m afraid your tea will be quite cold. 
KovcretmMan—Thank you so much. I had really 
forgotten about it. Art is so absorbing. I will call 
J.R. 
Mrs. Brown—I'll see you a little later. [KovcEt- 
MAN bows ceremoniously. She enters house. | 
KovucrtmMan—By Jove! They are wonderful pic- 
tures. Wait till J.R. sees them! What a pity so 
few are left. We could have made a fortune out of 
them. [RosENcarTEN enters from studio with a num- 
ber of canvases under his arm.| Goodness sakes, J.R., 
what on earth have you been doing with that poor fool? 
I haven’t been wasting my time. I’ve made a won- 
derful discovery. [He pours himself out a cup of tea. | 
RosencAaRTEN—| Still absorbed.| You have? 
Kovucretman—The old lady’s husband was a genius. 
They are wonderful pictures. You should see the 
letter Simonds wrote him! And Simonds backing an 
artist is even better than Heinz behind a pickle. 
RosENGARTEN—My poor Isaac! Simonds died fif- 
teen years ago. You have the brain sometimes of an 
early Christian martyr. 
KovucEetMaAn—Well! Who was it who found the 
fifteenth-century Virgin in the little chapel here? 
RosENGARTEN—That wasn’t bad; but when you hear 
of my new scheme, Isaac, your Virgin, in comparison 
to it, won’t be worth more than a bottle of pickles. 
KovucretmMan—|Irritably.| Well, what is it, in the 
name of heaven—all this tomfool mystery, and those 
pictures under your arm? 
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RosENGARTEN—These pictures! There is a fortune 
in them! 

Kovucre~tmMan—Oh! Come now, be serious! We must 
get a hold of the old lady’s pictures, there’s a real 
possibility there. 

RosENGARTEN—My poor chap, when you hear of 
my plan—and I see it all—I have it all mapped out— 
your hair will simply stand up on your head. 

KovceLtMan—I’ll admit it won’t be the first time 
you’ve made it stand up. But out with it, for God’s 
sake, man! 

RosENGARTEN—| Tapping the canvases.| ve told 
you, it’s all in these pictures. 

KovucEeLMan—Yow’re not going to try to make me 
think that we can do anything with that poor idiot’s 
pictures ? 

RosENGARTEN—| Positively.| I certainly am. 

KovucrtmMan—Oh! Come now, there are limits! 

RosENGARTEN—Limits are for the limited. You also 
said there were limits when I concocted the scheme of 
the cigar-store Indian figures. We’ve made a bit out 
out of that, haven’t we? Already almost three hundred 
thousand, isn’t it? 

KoucELMAN—| Pouring tea for himself and Rosrn- 
GARTEN.|] Yes; but I don’t see any connection. 

RosENGARTEN—You will! Do you remember you 
told me then that the public was not the fool I took 
it for? 

KoucELMan—Yes; but 

RosENGARTEN—And you were convinced that it 
would be impossible to reduce the number of Indians 
144 








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in order to give value to those we might buy up? You 
even said that my idea was ridiculous, 

KovucrtmMan—lIt did seem ridiculous at first. 

RosENGARTEN—Well, how long did it take me before 
I manipulated the Civic Improvement Society to get 
rid of the Indians through the Press on the grounds 
that they were relics of American infancy and barbar- 
ism, and a disgrace to our esthetic spirit? 

KovucrtmMan—They did disappear pretty fast, I 
must admit, under the lash of ridicule. Americans 
can’t stand that. 

RosENGARTEN—Then after we had bought in several 
hundred of them, it didn’t take long, did it, before I 
got the art critics singing in the Press about the Cigar- 
store Indians being expressive of Primitive American 
Art? And now there are two in the Metropolitan, one 
in the British Museum, and one in the Luxembourg. 
Of course, after that, no collection of an American mil- 
lionaire is complete without at least one or more. 

Kovcrtman—|[ Winking.| But there are a few very 
choice examples still to be obtained in the Kougelman 
Galleries—at a price! 

RosENGARTEN—This time, my dear Isaac, instead 
of two or three hundred thousand, I see a million or 
more. 

Kovcrtman—A million! That’s all very fine! But 
how? I don’t understand. 

RosENGARTEN—Don’t you think it is kinder to turn 
a fool into a genius than to make of a genius a fool? 
—which is what the world has always done. 

KovcrtmMan—Our fool, then, is to be turned by us 

145 


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into a genius, and his pictures sold as masterpieces, I 
suppose. 

RosEencartTEN—Exactly! 

Kovcrtman—|Incredulously.| But, my dear J.R., 
really that’s going too far. I don’t think much of the 
public myself, but there is such a thing as public 
opinion. 

RosENGARTEN—| Lighting a cigarette.| 'The public 
has never had an opinion, and never will have one! 
Public opinion is merely the private opinion of one or 
more dominant spirits, who mould the mass, which is 
as clay in their hands, entirely according to their 
personal ambitions and interests. 

KovcrtmMAn—Are there no good leaders, then? 

RosENGARTEN—Why, certainly, when their private 
interests happen to coincide with the public welfare, 
we then have good leaders. Life is a battle between 
shepherds for control of the herd, which bleats, grazes 
about, is “‘sheared,” and has its ankles nipped by the 
collie police. It was an astute little group of shepherds 
who ousted their predecessors with that meaningless 
trinity of words, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” ! 

KovucErLmMan—Your philosophy of life is obviously 
based on egoism. 

RosEncAarTEN—My philosophy is based on biology, 
and the biologist knows that the public not only wants 
to be fooled, but needs to be fooled, demands to be 
fooled, for its health and happiness. <A public that 
is no longer fooled turns with despair on its leaders, 
and struggles through revolution, horror and chaos 
to find new leaders capable of fooling it again. The 
people not only seek to be fooled by their government, 
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but by religion, art and science. Religion has been 
exhausted, shown up by science. Art is tottering on its 
last legs, and the world has now turned to science; and 
when they can no longer be fooled by that they will 
revert in anguish and despair to religion again, to be 
soothed and comforted and fooled by the Mumbo- 
Jumbo high-priest-man. 

KoucretmMan—Well, my dear J.R., I hope you are 
not fooling me. 

RosENGARTEN—Isaac, the Kougelmans and_ the 
Rosengartens are shepherds! 

Kovcetman—Hum! [Beginning to ignite.| But 
don’t let’s get too far away from that million! For 
the life of me though I can’t see a million in these 
things. [Picking wp one of the canvases and sceptically 
scratching his head.| Perhaps I’m holding it upside 
down! 

RosENGARTEN—That doesn’t matter! It’s all the 
better. It makes it easier to label it with new “ists”’ 
and ‘‘isms.” 

KovucreLtMan—Instead of Cubism and Futurism, we 
might call it ““Upsidedownism” or ‘“’Topsy-turvyist”! 

RosENGARTEN 





You’re facetious, Isaac. 

KovucretmMan—Perhaps! I’m still completely dazed, 
at any rate. 

RosENGARTEN—Here’s the whole idea; it’s as simple 
as the Indians. We take our fool to Paris, dress him 
as an artist, with flowing tie, etc. He already looks 
like Christ. Have an exhibition of his pictures in our 
galleries ; start up our newspaper and magazine critics ; 
have our friend Van Rensselaer-Levineson publish a 


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book about him, on the lines of his Italian Primitives, 
or like the one he did for us on the Indians 

KoucreLMan—| Reminiscently.| Charged us too 
much for it, damn him! 

RosENGARTEN—Edit one of our éditions de luxe with 
reproductions of his pictures, and a preface by some 
great literary light, like Mirbeau, who would swallow 
bait and all to be the first to discover a new genius. 
Start up the Duchess of Mandelieu, whom we landed 
with two Indians, and who is craving for notoriety, and 
old Van Loon, who owns an Indian too, and is suffo- 
cated with art jargon and intellectual snobbism, and 
all their Ritzonian following, who are dying of chic. 
Have a hat, collar and corset named after our 








genius 
KovucELMAN—Or suspender, button 
RosENGARTEN—|Ignoring interruption.| Get the 
great dressmakers, Poiret for instance, to name a 
colour for him. Rumpelmeyer can christen a cake with 





his name. Of course, have his picture conspicuously 
refused by the Salon, and vitriolically attacked by 
Clews, or some other idiotic reactionary crank. Roths- 
child might name a horse for him, the Duchess could 
call a new variety of carnation after him, and we could 
easily have him referred to in a speech in the House 
of Deputies by our friend Stern, who believes himself 
an art connoisseur, and has his political eye on the 
Portfolio of Fine Arts. 

KouceLmMan—lI’m beginning to think, J.R., that I'd 
rather have you backing a fool than even Thompson 
or Carter backing a pill. The picture part of it might 
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be possible—I can almost see that—but what will you 
do with the fool? 

RosENGARTEN—What will we do with the fool? 
Why, he’s perfect! We can do what we want with him. 
I can teach him the proper art jargon, and interpret 
his childish language symbolically. [Half closing his 
eyes with prophetic gesture.| I can see him now as a 
sort of a prophet of purity and simplicity, crowned 
with “ists” and “isms.” But all that will come later. 
Just wait! | 

Kovcre~tmMan—How about his mother? She will 
never let him go. 

RosENGARTEN—What! With officers of the Young 
Men’s Christian Association? Just leave all that 
to me. 

KoucrtmMan—And the royalties to the mother? We 
didn’t make much out of Rhinestone the sculptor after 
having launched and exploited him at enormous ex- 
pense. There he is now in London, established as a 
genius, making a fortune out of mud-pies, with us 
out of it. 

RosENGARTEN—Goodness, Isaac, he’s a Rhinestone, 
not a fool! That’s the very reason I’ve taken a Goy 
this time. He’ll never be able to throw us over, and 
as for the royalties, we can pay what we like. 

KovcetmMan—|[Warningly.| You remember what 
Lincoln said about fooling the public all the time? 

Rosrncarten—|Hopelessly.| After all I’ve said 
about the public, I now hear a Kougelman seriously 
quoting that wily old shepherd, who gathered in his 
herds with those melliferous words: “A government of 

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the people, for the people, by the people.” Leave that 
to sentimentalists like Drinkwater and H. G. Wells. 
[Enter Mrs. Brown. They both rise. | 

KoucELMAN—Mrs. Brown, we have had such a 
charming moment in your garden; the tea and cakes 
were delicious. 

Mrs. Brown—lIt has been a pleasure to me. 

RosENGARTEN—My partner has been talking to me 
about your husband’s pictures; he evidently had amaz- 
ing talent. 

KovucEeLMan—Amazing ! 

RosENGARTEN—| With mesmeric intonation.| I said 
talent, my dear Mrs. Brown; but we must not confuse 
talent with genius. Great talent like your husband 
had is extremely rare indeed; but genius is a divine 
white flame that is perceived and cherished by few. It 
is, alas! often extinguished by the ignorant and indif- 
ferent world which mistakes it for madness. Christ 
said, “One must become as a little child to enter the 
Kingdom of Heaven,” and it is they who have the sim- 
plicity and purity of little children who are chosen to 
receive this sacred gift of the Almighty Master. [He 
pauses. With impressive emphasis and hand uplifted. | 
Your son is of those chosen. 

Mrs. Brown—| Astownded.| But, Mr. Rosengarten, 
I don’t understand. You bewilder me. Had I not seen 
how kind you are, I would think you were making fun 
of my unfortunate son. 

RosENGARTEN—No, my dear lady, I’m in earnest, 
terribly in earnest. This is one of the greatest events 
of my life. Let us sit down over here, for I have much 
to tell you. [Places a chair for her. | 
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Mrs. Brown—[Sinking into chair, dazed.] You 
confuse me. I don’t know what to think, it’s all so un- 
believable, impossible, after all these years of sorrow. 
My poor child a genius! Is that what you mean? 

RosENcARTEN—| Reverently.] Yes, a genius. 

Mrs. Brown—But how? Not in his sad little pic- 
tures? 

RosENGARTEN—WNot sad little pictures! His is mar- 
vellous art! They are the greatest modern paintings 
I’ve seen. 

KoucretmMan—|[Intensely.| They are so symbolical, 
I can hardly grasp them myself. 

Mrs. Brown—[Breaking down.| It’s all too sud- 
den. It’s too much. I’m overwhelmed. [Weeps 
silently. | 

RosEncarTEN—| Tenderly patting her hand.| Great 
joy is sometimes even harder to bear than great sor- 
row. My heart is heavy with the shock of joy I have 
given you. 

Mrs. Brown—[Drying her eyes.| If my husband 
could only have heard this. [T'o RosENcarTEN.| You, 
I know, are a great art connoisseur—Mr. Kougelman 
has told me about you—but, even so, I haven’t the 
strength to believe what you are telling me. 

RosENGARTEN—We will give you the strength, won’t 
we, Isaac? 

KovertmMan—[Fervently.| Yes, oh yes. Although 
I’m almost as overcome by it all as Mrs. Brown. 

Mrs. Brown—Did you recognize genius in his pic- 
tures immediately? 

RosENGARTEN—Immediately. You must have noticed 
how I withdrew in meditation. I was entirely unpre- 

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pared, it was so unexpected. One should be prepared 
by a pilgrimage for genius and beauty, not stumble in 
upon the shrine. 

Mrs. Brown—| Puzzled.| But, Mr. Kougelman, you 
never mentioned my son while I was showing you my 
husband’s pictures. 

KouceLMan—|Confounded.| No! Well—that is 
to say—you see—eh—well 

RosEncARTEN—|Coming to his assistance.| You 
see my friend has lived so much in the glorious sunsets 
of old masters. 

KoucELtMan—| With relief.) Yes, the old masters. 

RosENGARTEN—He was awakened later than I by 
the triumphant dawn of future art. You no doubt have - 
heard of the Futurists, and Cubists, and Imagists? 

Mrs. Brown—Oh yes, I have heard of them, but have 
never seen their pictures. 








RosEncARTEN—That explains, then, why you have 
not recognized your son’s genius. If I may be allowed 
to say so, it’s a matter of long education. 

Mrs. Brown—But my husband always said there 
was nothing to know in art, but everything to feel. 

RosENcAaRTEN—That’s just it! The new art is the 
education of feeling. Isaac, let me have that art maga- 
zine you have in your pocket. I’m sure I saw a repro- 
duction of that famous picture of the “Nude walking 
downstairs backwards.” [Koucrtman hands him 
magazine.| Thanks. 

KovuceLMan—| While Rosencarten looks through 
magazine.| I remember, on seeing that picture for the 
first time at the Armoury Exhibition in New York, my 
152 


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emotion was so intense it almost made me weep. No 
old master ever had that effect on me. 

RosENGARTEN—Here it is! [Presents magazine to 
Mrs. Brown. ]—with that wonderful poem which was 
dedicated to it and caused such a stir at that time in 
the literary world. 

Mrs. Brown—|[Looking at picture earnestly. | 
Well, it must be beyond me. I’ve been living perhaps 
too long out of the world. You say this is called a 
“Nude walking down the Staircase backwards.” But 
I can’t see any nude or any staircase. All I can see 
are blurred triangles. It even makes me feel rather 
dizzy to look at it. 

RosENGARTEN—|Encouragingly.| Dizzy, that’s it! 
It’s the beginning of your education of feeling. 

Mrs. Brown—Why, even in John’s pictures I can 
see certain vague things, which look more or less like 
flowers and trees, and spots which might be taken for 
little figures. 

RosENGARTEN—Now may I read you the poem? 
It’s so atmospheric. It’s one of the most notable ones 
in modern literature. [Takes magazine from Mars. 
Brown and reads. Eien, who has been removing the 
tea, occasionally stops and listens to the conversation. | 


To a Nude, walking down the Staircase backwards 


At last we are together! 
I always knew that it would happen thus. 
I shall place my hand firmly on the banister 
And not be deterred in my ascent; 
Seeing the Nude eternal before me. 
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The nightingale is singing on the top landing; 
You could not bear the song. 
Although my fly paper is black with flies 
It does not mean that I shall not hear the nightingale. 
You are nude, believe me, and are descending the stair- 
case backwards, 
Because in your subliminal self 
You prefer to use the fly for sunlit trout. 
My fly paper is black with flies; 
But I shall hear the song of nightingale 
Although I have worn a white boutonniére, and heard 
Parsifal. 
At last we are together! 
I always knew that it would happen thus. 


[He quietly closes magazine, and then with an expres- 
sion of rapt admiration very slowly articulates. | 
Beautiful, ever beautiful! 

KovucreLMAan—Sublime! It gives me the most phan- 
tastic emotion. And to think that I did not understand 
it when I first heard it some years ago. 

RosENGARTEN—Yet, it’s so simple; it’s static 
emotion. 

Mrs. Brown—[Completely mystified.| I’m sorry, 
Mr. Rosengarten, I don’t understand it; I don’t under- 
stand a word of it. 

RosENGARTEN—It is, I know, new to you, Mrs. 
Brown. I appreciate that. 

Mrs. Brown—| Naively.| I know Keats’ Ode to the 
Nightingale. My husband loved it. I often read it 
to him while he painted. We both loved it. But this 
poem 
154 





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RosENGARTEN—Of course Keats was a very great 
poet, one of the greatest; but may I dare to say that 
there is as great a gulf between Keats’ nightingale and 
this nightingale as exists between the great talent of 
your husband and the genius of your son? 

Mrs. Brown—It’s all so strange; it’s like a dream. 

RosENGARTEN—Your husband and Keats were great 
masters of the past; but your son and the author of 
this poem are supreme masters of the present and 
future. John belongs to the world, he must no longer 
remain hidden in this little village. 

Mrs. Brown—|[ Helplessly.| But what am I to do? 
We live here—er—what can I do? 

RosEncARTEN—I'l] tell you. You must put your 
son in our care. We will take him to Paris. 

Mrs. Brown—| Alarmed.| To Paris! 

Kovucrrman—|[Soothingly.| But not immediately, 
Mrs. Brown; later; he can come later. 

Mrs. Brown—But I can’t let my poor little John 
go out into the cruel world like that. 

RosENGARTEN—| With animation.| You must no 
longer think of him as your poor little John. He is 
your great John; your glorious John; your world- 
famous John. 

Mrs. Brown—I[In tears.| Oh no! he can’t leave his 
poor mother and old Ellen; we’ll never be able to let 
him go. 

RosEncArTEN—[Dramatically.| How many mil- 
lions of mothers have given up their sons in these last 
cruel years? Will you refuse now to give up yours for 
battlefields of art and glory? You won’t, I know. 

Mrs. Brown—[Piteously.| No, no, I dare not 
refuse, I suppose. It seems like a miracle. 





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RosENGARTEN—| Histrionically.| It is a miracle, a 
modern miracle. [Joun’s flute is heard from studio. | 

KovucrrmMan—l’ve always loved the flute. Is that 
your son? 

Mrs. Brown—Yes; his father used to play it. 

RosENGARTEN—It’s so pastoral, it gives one the 
fields, the flowers, the shepherd and his flock. Shall 
we go in and talk it all over with the Master? 

Mrs. Brown—The Master! No one has ever called 
him that except old Ellen. 

RosENGARTEN—Old Ellen calls him Master John, 
but now it is John the Master. [They walk towards 
the studio in silence, and enter. KoucretmMan suddenly 
stops on threshold. | 

Koucrrman—| Aside.| By Jove! I'll bet the chauf- 
feur has gone to get a drink and left our Virgin in the 
car. | He hastily disappears out of gate, but reappears 
immediately, with a fine example of a half life-size 
statue of a Renaissance Virgin in his arms. The figure 
is in fair condition, worm-eaten in places, with the 
plaster showing through the gold.| You don’t often 
find a Virgin of such value in these days! The old 
priest looked as if he knew more about twentieth- 
century virgins than Renaissance ones. [He tries to 
stand Virgin on her base.| When you’re touched up 
a bit, my lady, and standing on your pedestal in the 
Kougelman chapel, you’ll have artistic New York on 
their knees before you, instead of a handful of peasants 
in a village church. Think of getting her for five hun- 
dred francs, and the old codger took me for a fool 
at that. [As pedestal is broken, he finds it easier to 
place her on her head agamst the wall. There! you’re 
156 


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safer like that, on your head. We’re all upside down 
anyhow. [Going towards studio.| J.R. is a wizard 
all right. If his scheme goes through, our young fool 
should bring us in more than a hundred old virgins. 
[Enters studio. | 
ELLten—|[Appears at cottage door with watering- 
pot, and starts to water flower-beds. It is dusk. | 
Mother of Moses! What would the master be a-thinkin’ 
of all these high-jinks? Is it asleep I be, or is it awake? 
A jenius, the gintleman called my poor lamb, whatever 
that may be, and showed the missus a picture what 
made her feel dizzy-like. Sure, and it’s meself that’s 
feelin’ dizzy now. And says he, not crackin’ a smile 
on his face, ‘My fly paper is black with flies,” says 
he; and the missus, with tears a-tricklin’ down her 
cheeks, answers, “‘I’ve not the strength to believe it,” 
says she. And it’s cracked and crazy we all be ivver 
since them American officers came in a-askin’ for a coop 
of tea, and stood us all upside down on our heads. [She 
looks about, and on seeing the Virgin on her head 
against the wall utters a shriek and falls to her knees. | 
Almighty God and the holy Saints, presarve us! It’s 
the Holy Virgin Hersilf I’ve been a-prayin’ to these last 
thirty years a-standin’ on Her head. [Covers her face 
with her hands, while looking in the opposite direction. | 
Surely *tis Her I seen a-standin’ on Her head. But I 
don’t believe it, for me poor brain is so befuzzled I can’t 
see straight. [Peeps through her fingers.| Oh, Lord 
of Mercy! ’Tis Her! ’Tis Her! I don’t believe it, 
but ’tis Her! [Wails and moans. | 
Mrs. Brown—[ Appearing in doorway of studio, fol- 
lowed by RosENGARTEN, KovucEetman and Joun. Runs 
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over to ExiEN.] What is it, my poor Ellen? What’s 
the matter? What’s the matter? 

E1.ten—Oh, mum, ’tis the Blessed Virgin Hersilf 
over there a-standin? on Her head! Oh! Oh! 
[ Moaning. | 

RosENGARTEN—| Angrily to KouceLmMan, under his 
breath.| You marplot! You’ve botched it all. 
[Rushing forward.| It’s all right, Ellen, don’t be 
frightened. It’s all right. We brought the Virgin 
here. You see, Mrs. Brown, we’re taking the statue 
to New York to the Metropolitan Museum. 

Mrs. Brown—| Relieved.| Oh, that’s it! I hate to 
have it go; but if it’s for a museum 

RosENGARTEN—It’s fifteenth-century—er—er—Re- 
naissance; beautiful example, you know. Oughtn’t to 
be hidden away here. That’s the reason we’re taking 
her to Paris. You see, the students would never see 
her here. 

ELLeEN—([Getting up from her knees.| Oh! it’s 
frightened I’ve been. [With hand on her heart.| Me 
heart’s a-thumpin’ and thumpin’ 

Mrs. Brown—lIt’s all right, Ellen; these gentlemen 
are taking the statue to a great museum. 

RosENGARTEN—Yes. Next week, Ellen, you’ll have 
a brand-new Virgin, all white and blue and gold, with 
stars on her head. 

Exien—Ah, mercy me! I was that scared. For the 
last thirty years I’ve been a-prayin’ to Our Lady. [T'o 
RosENnGARTEN.| In your countree, sir, that must mean 
nothin’, for me sister Bridget, what lives in New York, 
says everything changes continual there, and that it 
would even make ’em all uncomfortable and nervous-like 


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to see a house a-standin’ too long in the same place. 

RosEncarRTEN—[Smiling.| There’s a lot in what 
you say, Ellen. 

KovertmMan—It’s good for the builders and archi- 
tects anyhow. 

RosENGARTEN—TI suppose we had better be leaving, 
Mrs. Brown. 

KovcrtmMan—|[Putting on gloves.| Yl put the 
statue back in the car. [Goes out, carrying Virgin. | 

RosENGARTEN—-My dear John, everything is now 
decided, and you are to come to us in Paris later. You 
do want to come, don’t you? 

Joun—|[Enthusiastically.| Oh yes. I like you so 
much. 

RosEncaRTEN—Well, I think I’ll take those pictures 
with me; the few I put aside in the studio. 

Joun—[Pleased.] I am so glad you lke them. 
No one has ever asked me for one before. Ill get them 
for you. [Goes into studio. KoucrtMan re-enters 
from highway. | 

RosencarteN—Mrs. Brown, I'll write you from 
Paris, and we’ll make all the detailed arrangements 
about John’s coming later. Now I'll say good-bye, and 
thank you for a wonderful afternoon. 

Mrs. Brown—Good-bye. I can find no words to 
express my feelings. 

Kovucrtman—|[ Shaking hands.| So pleased to have 
~ met you, Mrs. Brown. Excuse my glove. 

Mrs. Brown—[Sadly.| Ah! Mr. Kougelman, you 
and Mr. Rosengarten have revealed my son to me, only 
to take him away. 

RosENGARTEN—To give him to the world. [Seeing 

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JOHN returning with pictures under each arm.| Oh! 
thank you, my dear John. You’ll see them all later 
in Paris in beautiful gold frames. [Takes pictures 
from him.] | 

Kovucetman—|[To Joun.| We’ll meet in Paris. soon. 

RosENGARTEN—| Aside to ELuEeN.| Ellen, the scones 
were delicious. [Slipping fifty francs into her hand. | 

Ex.ren—Thank you, sorr. 

RosEencartHN—|[ Aloud to Exien.| You'll have 
your brand-new Virgin next week. 

ELLeN—|[ With a quizzical smile.| I suppose ’tis 
the way of the world, sorr, to have old countrees 
a-wantin’ new virgins, and new countrees a-wantin’ old 
virgins. [General laughter. | 

RosencartTEN—Mrs. Brown, your Ellen is a real 
philosopher. Good-bye. [Rosencarten and Kovcet- 
MAN bow low and withdraw. Motor is heard leaving 
behind wall. Joun stands at open gate waving. | 

ELLEN—|[ Looking at the fifty francs.| The Ameri- 
cans is a weird lot, but ginerous they are. Fifty francs 
for a-servin’ a coop of tea! [Enters house. | 

JoHn—Mother dear, that kind gentleman told me 
that I was a genius. What is a genius? Is it better to 
be a genius than to be a poor fool? 

Mrs. Brown—God knows, my dear child, God 
knows! [Runs into house, covering her eyes with her 
handkerchief. | 

Joun—I wonder why mother seems so sad. I have 
had such a happy day. [Dreamily wanders to a chair, 
takes flute from pocket and begins to play. | 


CURTAIN 
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ACT II 


Paris: five months later in the spacious private show- 
room of KoucELMAN & Co. 

The walls are draped from ceiling to floor with 
plum-coloured velvet. 

On rear wall are hung two large paintings in 
massive gold frames, one by Van Dyck and the 
other by Rubens. To the left stands an easel, on 
which is a picture by Ingres. Behind it, stacked 
against the wall, are a dozen or more unframed 
canvases of various sizes. In front of easel is a 
Louis Fifteenth tapestry sofa of the epoch. Three 
arm-chairs belonging to the same set as the sofa 
are grouped towards centre of room, in front 
of a long Louis Sixteenth desk with beautifully 
chiselled bronze mountings. On desk are books, 
latest art publications, papers, telephone, etc.; a 
large old Sévres ink-pot, with upstanding green 
quill pen of exaggerated length; two small bronze 
statues on marble pedestals, one by Jean de 
Bologna, the other attributed by Levineson to 
Peter Visher; and a large photograph of Mrrvyn, 
by Alfred Stieglitz, in a Cordovan leather frame. 
Behind the desk, which is placed parallel to right 
wall, is a very choice example of a Louis Six- 
teenth desk-chair. 

To the right is a door leading into adjoining 
room. In rear, left, is a double door opening into 
the Kovcrtman Art GALLERIES. 

A pair of three-quarter size statues of wooden 
Indian chieftains in feather head-dresses and full 

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war regalia, each holding a tomahawk in one hand, 
and a large bunch of cigars in the other, stand 
upon massive stone pedestals against rear wall. 
The pedestals are elaborately decorated by Kovu- 
GELMAN’s experts with Indian designs. Except 
for a short skirt from waist to knee, resembling a 
kilt, these statues are nude, and crudely coloured 
with vivid paint which has been softened and toned 
down by KoucEtman & Co. 

They have obviously been cut out of wood and 
painted by the same honest wood-choppers who 
turn out galloping steeds for merry-go-rounds 
and gilded figures for circus vans. 

About twenty years ago similar Indian figures 
were to be seen in front of every cigar store in 
America as tobacco trade signs, but they finally 
began to disappear when the little cigar shop was 


put out of business by the Tobacco Trust. The ~ 


remaming ones were put to flight by newspaper 
attacks inspired by KoucELMAn & Co., and then 
bought up by them as junk, to be later sold as 
American “Primitives.” 

Between the Indians ts a rare and beautiful 
Gothic chest of exquisite handicraft. 

On either side of entrance to the gallery are two 
delicately fluted seventeenth-century Spanish 
altar columns mounted on modern bases, with 
polychrome Corinthian tops, on which are placed 
respectively a Rodin head and a small Greek torso. 
To the left of them, in the corner, stands a Renats- 
sance marble pedestal, above which is hung a 
beautiful Flemish tapestry. 


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The floor is covered with a fine old Turkish rug. 
In a cabinet behind the desk are rare Chinese por- 
celains, jades and crystals. 

As curtain rises KoucELMAN is discovered 
seated at desk smoking a large cigar, in conversa- 
tion with RosENGARTEN, who is lounging oppo- 
site in one of the tapestry arm-chairs smoking a 
cigarette. 

KovucELMaAn, probably out of respect for his 
“old masters,” is, with his pearl-grey spats, highly 
varnished Hellstern shoes, cut-away coat, fancy 
waistcoat, striped trousers, bejewelled hands, 
pomaded hair, perfumed monogrammed violet silk 
handkerchief peeping from out his sleeve, Cartier 
watch-chain and sleeve-links, and enormous Tecla 
pearl scarf-pin stuck through the very latest 
Charvet tie, simply—‘gotten up to beat the band.” 

RosENGARTEN, as usual, is dressed like a gen- 
tleman. 


RosENcARTEN—Isaac, you must be careful about not 
calling him John. 

KovuceLMan—It does slip out, I suppose; but as 
we’ve been talking, thinking and dreaming of nothing 
but John for the last month, it’s difficult to suddenly 
call him Mervyn. 

RosEncARTEN—It’s lucky I thought in time of 
changing the name of our genius. We never could 
have done anything with John Brown. It smacks of 
book-keeping and dry goods, and, besides, the John 
Brown “lies a-mouldering in the grave,” and the other 
was a rather late Victorian, like you, Isaac, at times. 


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KovcetmMan—Hum! At any rate the name Mervyn 
isn’t bad. How did you think of it? 

RosENGARTEN—Oh, it’s an old Welsh name. 'There’s 
myth and mystery in it. It’s good to operate with. 
I also thought of the name Glamorgan. It’s too heavy, 
though; he couldn’t carry it. 

KoucrtmMan—The titles for his pictures you must 
have fished straight out of the mad-house. 

RosENGARTEN—Yes, the mad-house of humanity. 
People no longer buy pictures or anything else now. 
They buy names and labels. [Looking at magazine. | 
Here are clever names for Futurist painters, for in- 
stance: ‘‘Piccasso” and ‘“‘Piccabia.” The first part, 
“pic,” enters the brain of the good bourgeois like a 
needle, and the “‘casso” or “cabia” explode afterwards 
like a bomb in his pocket-book. “Matisse” isn’t a bad 
name either; it has the sibilant, mesmeric hiss of a ser- 
pent. You had luck with Kougelman; there’s good 
cheer in it; it gurgles like a brook in springtime. 

KoucetMan—Goodness, J.R., we have so much to 
arrange, and it’s you who are gurgling. [Knock at 
door.| Comein! [T'wo porters appear carrying Vir- 
gin of first act. The missing hand has been replaced 
by a new one, with the old gold patine and worm-eaten 
wood cleverly imitated.| Ah! at last, there she is. On 
the pedestal over there, please. [Eweunt porters, after 
placing Virgin on pedestal. | 

RosENGARTEN—| Without turning around.| Don’t 
put her on her head again! 

KovcELMAN—|Ewamining statue minutely.| He’s 
done it beautifully. He’s a clever little sculptor. I 
defy anyone to know that the hand has been added on. 
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Come and look at it; the worm-holes are perfectly beau- 
tiful. Dll bet even Levineson couldn’t detect them. 

RosENGARTEN—| Rising from chair.| Well, I must 
have a look at those perfectly beautiful worm-holes. 
[Glancing at statue.] Yes, not bad. 

KovcreLMan—| Apprehensively.| Vm getting aw- 
fully nervous about John—Mervyn, I mean. Do you 
think we will surely be ably to carry it through? He’s 
been with us now two weeks, and in spite of your les- 
sons I don’t see much difference. 

RosENGARTEN—Now, don’t get worried; isn’t every- 
thing going as I planned? Isn’t all Paris talking of 
the Mervyn Exhibition? They are flocking to our gal- 
leries in thousands, and it hasn’t been going a week. 

KoucretmMan—| Reassured.| Over a thousand came 
yesterday. 

RosENGARTEN—Well, then; and look at the Press 
notices; there are columns already. Listen to this— 
and not by one of our critics either. [Reading from 
morning paper which he picks up from desk.| ‘Mervyn 
the Master of Subjectivity. Let all those who are 
entombed in the charnel-house of materialism, and are 
seeking in vain to escape from the bondage of self, 
go for comfort and hope to the Kougelman Galleries, 
and bathe their world-worn spirits in the liquid, limpid 
sunlight of Mervyn’s subliminal art.” And it goes on 
like that for almost two more columns, my dear fellow. 

KovucELmMan—|[ With upturned eyes and shaking his 
head.| It passeth understanding. 

RosENGARTEN—Here’s another! ‘Mother Nature 
presents to Mervyn no wrinkled face nor tottering 
form, but through him constantly renews the bloom of 

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her youth. His pictures are testaments of divine truth, 
and by his amazing processes of simplification and elim- 
ination express the almost superhuman economy of an 
absolute mind in art.”” Do you hear that? “An abso- 
lute mind”! 

KovucrtMan—It’s enough to make us lose our own. 

RosENGARTEN—My dear friend, I would have lost 
mine years ago if I hadn’t become a_ philosophical 
biologist. 

KovucetmMan—John—oh, damn!—Mervyn certainly 
looks the part in the clothes we bought him, but God 
knows what’s going to happen when he meets people. 
I’m almost terrified at the thought. We can’t keep him 
hidden all the time. I still don’t see how you’re going 
to carry that part of it off. And what’s to prevent 
everyone from seeing him as a fool? 

RosENGARTEN— Vanity. 

KovucrtmMan—Vanity! But what’s that got to do 
with it? 

RosENcARTEN—Everything! Vanitas Vanitatum! 
And our poor fool on a hook and line of dribbling non- 
sense will be gulped up by the blind vanity of those 
who see the possibility of exploiting themselves in hay- 
ing discovered a genius. 

KovcetmMan—That’s all well enough for the Duchess 
and her acolytes, who are craving notoriety, and for 
small groups of self-exploiting critics and literary 
cranks; but they’re only a handful. 

RosENGARTEN—The others who base their superi- 
ority on their immediate appreciation of the very latest 
thing in art and literature will blindly follow their 
leaders, and be aped in their turn by the camp-followers, 


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who dare not even open their eyes for fear of being 
accused of ignorance and stupidity. There you have 
the three groups behind art to-day. 

KovucELMAN—You have forgotten us. 

RosEncarTEN—[Picks up book and turns over 
pages.| Ohno, I never do that! But we’re not behind 
art, Isaac, we’re in front of it. 

KovcrrmMan—|[A knock at the door.| Come in! 
[Moses Stems enters.] Well, Stein, is everything 
going on all right? 

Srems—Splendidly, Mr. Kougelman! The galleries 
are packed. I just came in to tell you that a great 
many important people are there. The Duchess of 
Mandelieu came in a few minutes ago, with a number of 
friends. She told me to say that she would be back 
later with Mr. Van Rensselaer-Levineson. Old McBride 
of the London Times is nosing about, making notes. 

KovucELMAaN—I’m suspicious of him. 

RosENcARTEN—Feel your way into his article. 
What was the Duchess saying? 

Srrrn—She was tremendously excited, and was tell- 
ing everyone how she had discovered Mr. Mervyn. 

RosENGARTEN—| Without looking up from book.| I 
started her on that voyage of discovery a few days ago 
in our last conversation. I’m delighted to hear she 
has arrived safely in port. 

KovucetMAan—Oh, Stein! Please let me know the 
instant Mr. Ezra P. Packer comes. I’ve just heard 
from the Ritz that he arrived from New York, with his 
family, yesterday. 

RosENGARTEN—Our Virgin over there has been wait- 

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ing for Mr. Ezra P. Packer, the New York multi- 
millionaire, for over four centuries. 

KoucELMan—By the way, I believe Mr. Lorenzo 
Gonzalez of Buenos Ayres is also in Paris. I don’t 
know if his photograph is in our album of millionaires. 
If it isn’t, procure one, for if he comes in you must 
spot him immediately. 

RosENcGARTEN—| Still perusing book.| It’s time for 
South America to be encouraged. 

Strem—l'll look it up; but I’d better go back before 
old McBride escapes. [Turns to go.| 

RosENcGARTEN—|[Suddenly.| Ah, here it is! [Look- 
ing up from book.| One minute, Stein; listen to this 
attentively, please. [Reading aloud.| ‘When the 
absolute ruler of worlds saw the’’—oh, well, that’s—no 
—here—|[ Reading slowly and distinctly.| ‘Man being 
the last and most perfect, He not only gave to him the 
five organs of sense—sight, smell, touch, taste, and 
hearing—but also a sixth (called Mamas), by which he 
can commune with God, and unlock the mysteries of 
nature. The sixth sense is the dual force generated 
by the attuned union of the two sexes within each indi- 
vidual, which is admitted by all Hindoo philosophers. 
The Sastrae not only promises”—oh! but that’s of no 
importance. [Closes book with snap.| Well, did you 
get the gist of that? 

Srrein—I gather that there is a sixth sense, called 
“Mamas,” in the Hindoo religion, but I didn’t quite get 
the dual sex part of it. 

KovucetmMan—|[T'o himself.| I didn’t get any of it. 

RosENGARTEN—Wel'll leave the dual sex to the Hin- 
doos for the moment, and begin with Mamas. 

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KoucretmMan—|Aside.| He’d better leave it all to 
?em, I think. 

Sterin—I see. 

RosENGARTEN—It’s about time for “ists? and 
“isms” to attach themselves to Mervyn’s name; you 
understand? 

Strin—Yes, Mr. Rosengarten—er—you mean 
—er P 





RosENGARTEN—This afternoon you might let the 
Hindoo word Mamas, meaning sixth sense, flutter about 
for a few minutes through the galleries, and be sure 
to see that the Duchess of Mandelieu catches it between 
her exquisite fingers before she comes in here. 

Stemn—I understand. You want the word Mamas, 
Mamasist, Mamasism, meaning the sixth sense, con- 
nected—er—associated with Mr. Mervyn’s art? 

RosENGARTEN—Quite so. 

Strrn—And you would like the Duchess of Man- 
delieu to think that the idea originated with her? 

RosENcARTEN—That’s it. The Duchess has a genius 
for appropriating and broadcasting the ideas of others. 

Stein—|[Laughing.| No one could better elucidate 
Mr. Mervyn’s art. 

RosENcARTEN—But remember, Stein, it’s not Mr. 
Mervyn, simply Mervyn. After a certain altitude the 
Mister drops off. One doesn’t say Mr. Raphael; it’s 
Raphael. It would be even absurd to call the genius 
of Pears’ Soap Mr. Pears. Immortals are never gen- 
tlemen. 

Srems—I have it. Id better get back to Mervyn 
and—eh—Mamas, | Ezvit.| 

RosENGARTEN—He’s a good man—Stein; he adds 

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the proper literary touch to the galleries, and relieves 
them of the commercial atmosphere. The spectacles I 
put on him the other day are a great success with his 
white hair. They give him an owl-like professorial 
look. 

KovucreLMan—He is certainly wonderful at netting 
gilded high-brows. 

RosENGARTEN—His conversation and general make- 
up give them reassurance and a feeling of security. 
He’s quick, too; he caught that Mamas psychology 
immediately. 

KovucrLMan—How is Mamas written, anyhow? It 
sounds to me like Ma-ma. We must be careful; it 
seems to me simply childish. 

RosencarTEN—On the contrary, it is childishly 
simple. 

KovucetMan—There you are again, inverting 
everything; you’re impossible! 

RosENcARTEN—Until I become—possible. No, I’m 
delighted with the word Mamas; it’s splendid. It sug- 
gests all that Yogi vogue and Hindoo business. Our 
ladies of fashion to-day are either stood on their heads 
against the wall by a pet Yogi, or turned upside down 
by a pet Bolshevik. 

KovcreLMaNn—I suppose fashion must have its pets. 

RosENGARTEN—FPersonally, were I a lady of fashion 
and passion, I would prefer a Cicisbeo, the pet of the 
past, to a Bolshevik, Yogi, or even Futurist or Dadaist. 

Stein—| Knocks, opens door, and thrusts in head. | 
Old McBride has just left. I made him feel like a 
Mervyn discoverer. He flew out in full feather. He’ll 
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now write a great article. Some American newspaper. 
men have come in. 

RosENGARTEN—Oh! they will swallow anything. 
Mervynize them, Mervynize them. [Stern nods and 
disappears. | 

RosENGARTEN—lI now see New York looming up in 
the distance. We can make a cult over there—a 
religion—the return to simplicity, and all that kind 
of thing. Look at Maeterlinck, for instance, our mod- 
ern Cagliostro of letters. His steamer was met by blue- 
bird aeroplanes. He was escorted to his hotel by 
blue-bird policemen. He was given blue-bird balls, and 
even the Mayor of New York became a blue bird him- 
self, and gave him the freedom of the city. That could 
only happen in America. Anything can be done with 
Americans. Science and machinery have turned them 
into fanatics, sentimentalists and ego-maniacs, and 
they are utterly devoid of both a sense of proportion 
and a sense of humour. 

KoucetmMan—|[With patriotic surprise.| Ameri- 
cans have no sense of humour? But that’s what we 
pride ourselves on. 

RosENGARTEN—Which shows that we have none. 
People always pride themselves on what they haven’t. 
The English have humour, the French wit, and the 
Americans merely a sense of farce. 

KovcELMan—Let us hope they won’t think Mervyn 
a farce. 

RosENGARTEN—In art, Europe thinks for America, 
and you and I, dear partner, think for Europe. [Tele- 
phone rings. | 

KovucrtmMan—| Answering telephone.| Hullo! Oh, 

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Van Rensselaer-Levineson! No, the Duchess hasn’t 
come yet. Your book—yes, good—I understand—all 
right, we’ll be here. Good-bye. [Hanging up telephone 
irritably.| I can’t stand Levineson. 

RosENGARTEN—| Mischievously.| Don’t forget the 
“Van Rensselaer.” 

KoucrrmMan—Van Rensselaer! My God! And I 
remember him years ago as little Sammy Levineson, 
hawking plaster Venuses on Broadway. And here he 
is now, posing as a sort of Petronius, with the most con- 
spicuous society woman in Europe and America as his 
mistress—the Duchess of Mandelieu, with all the Blu- 
menberg millions behind her. 

RosENGARTEN—That’s a fair bargain in “chic.” 
She gives him social prestige, and he gives her literary 
and artistic glamour. 

KouceLMan—Artistic glamour, and a baby into the 
bargain. And to think that Sammy Levineson’s son 
will be the future Duke of Mandelieu! Prince of Auri- 
beau, and Marquis of Pergomas! Everyone knows 
that the old Duke was completely senile when she 
bought him with her American dollars. 

RosENGARTEN—|Indifferently.| It’s one of the 
greatest names in the world; she didn’t pay too much 
for it. 

KovcrrmMan—Perhaps not; but she pays too much 
for Levineson, who has as much artistic sentiment as 
a fish. 

RosENGARTEN—-You may dislike him, but you can’t 
despise a man who is recognized as the greatest art 
_ critic of to-day. No; Levineson not only has social 
genius, and knows when, where and how to yawn with 


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strategic insolence, but is a past-master in manipulat- 
ing art jargon; and like us and others, who rise above 
the scum of mediocrity, understands the weaknesses 
of humanity and knows how to play on them. 

KoucELMAan—He’s so damned inhuman, and such an 
arrant snob. He wouldn’t dream of speaking to any- 
one less than a countess. 

RosENGARTEN—We’re all snobs after our fashion, 
and rightly so. Snobbism is merely a form of self- 
preservation. 

KovcrrmMan—Nonsense! I loathe snobs! They’re 
always despicable. 

RosENGARTEN—NO; a snob in a way is even an ideal- 
ist, as he tries for what he at least thinks is the top. 
It’s not always social life, by any means; it may be 
politics, science, or anything else. Our Mervyn venture 
in fact is entirely based on snobbism in art, and that’s 
why we need Van Rensselaer-Levineson and the Duchess, 
as they are formidable snobs in both art and society. 
[A knock at the door. StEtIn bows VAN RENSSELAER- 
LeEvinEson into the room. | 

Lrevineson—Good afternoon, J.R._ [Indifferently. | 
Ah! Kougelman. [T'o Rosencarten.| Your galleries 
are so crowded, I could hardly make my way through 
into the—er—Sanctum Sanctorum. Has the Duchess 
of Mandelieu telephoned? [Yawns. | 

KoucELMAN—No—er—not yet. 

Lrvineson—[Ignoring Kovcretman.] I gave her a 
rendezvous here at about four. We were all dining last 
night with the Grand Duchess Kira. She hasn’t been 
to the Exhibition yet; but the Prince of Fiorentina was 
most enthusiastic. You’ve met him, of course, J.R.? 


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Kovucrtman—| Assertively.| Vve met him too 

LrvinEson—|[ Witheringly.| No doubt you’ve spoken 
to him in the galleries. He’s so democratic, you know. 
[Yawns again. | 

KovceLMan—| Testily.] He was democratic enough 
to buy one of our Indians. 

RosENGARTEN—It must be so odd to meet a real 
democrat; I’ve never met one. 

Lrevineson—Paradoxing as usual, my dear J.R. 
[| Screwing in monocle and looking about room.| Ah! 
a new Virgin! 

KovucEtmMan—Yes—lovely, isn’t she? 

LrvinEson—Not bad—early Cinque Cento, Sienese 
School. Possibly by a pupil of Della Quercia. [He 
continues to examine statue. | 

KovcEeLMan—[ Quickly seizing opportunity.| Why 
not by Della Quercia himself? 

Lrvineson—|[ Bringing out his microscope. Drawl- 
ing.| Well, it’s possible, it’s possible, but improbable. 
Let me see, the movement of the hand is certainly 
exquisite—the almond finger-nails—yes, yes. If I 
examined it more carefully—who knows, who knows? 

KoucetmMan—| With a malicious wink to RosEen- 
GARTEN.| We were especially admiring the hand before 
you came in; weren’t we, J.R.? 

RosENGARTEN—Yes; but I am glad to see that Van 
Rensselaer-Levineson admires it so genuinely. 

KovucEeLMan—[Significantly.| If we were told by 
a great authority that it were a genuine Della Quercia, 
we would be willing to give him, say, twenty per cent. 
on the sale. 

Lrevineson—[Caswally.| If a great authority ex- 
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amined it more carefully, and found it to be a Della 
Quercia, he would ask at least thirty per cent. for the 
use of his name. 

RosENGARTEN—|[Insinuatingly.| As Van _ Rens- 
selaer-Levineson is the supreme authority, he might 
examine it—er—more carefully. 

Lrvineson—| After a minute examination with 
microscope.| Well, it’s unquestionably a genuine Ja- 
copo Della Quercia. 

KoucretMan—| Presses electric bell on desk with a 
gesture of finality.| Good! I thought it was a Quer- 
cia, but now I know it. [Aside.] Thirty per cent., 
damn him! 

RosENGARTEN—|[T'o Levineson.| And your book 
on Mervyn? 

Lrvineson—I’m sending the proofs to-night. 

RosENGARTEN—I’ve a suggestion to make. [ Lrevine- 
son and RosENGARTEN converse together. STEIN enters 
in answer to bell. | 

KovcELMAN—Stein, please have the name “Della 
Quercia” inscribed on a plaque, and place it on the 
Virgin’s pedestal. I would like it immediately. 

Srrrsn—On a gold card-board plaque, I suppose? 

Kovcetman—Right, but order a brass one to-day. 
[Stem nods. Evzit.| 

LrvinEson—|[7T'o RosENGARTEN.| Mamas? Hindoo 
mythology—sixth sense—yes—not bad. In my book 
I refer to the Negroid Period, and introduce the word 
“Moyo,” meaning spirit, which is so expressive of our 
genius’s esoteric sense of simplification and elimination. 

RosENGARTEN—|Eachanging a look with KoucEt- 
mAN.| And his ritualistic conservatism, transmissible 


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through his eclectic perception of nature—— A ciga- 
rette? [Offers his case. | 

Lrvineson—| Adjusts his monocle, yawns and im- 
passively takes cigarette.| ‘Thanks. 

RosEncARTEN—It was the Duchess of Mandelieu 
who suggested that Mervyn’s canvases aroused in one 
the sixth sense, or Mamas; and we were all so impressed 
with the idea, that we have been circulating it about. 

Lrvinrson—| With super-Ritzonian insolence.| Ah! 

RosENGARTEN—The Duchess has such rare percep- 
tion; her erudition is amazing! 

LrevinEson—She probably heard me refer to Mamas 
at various times. I can easily introduce it into my 
book. 

Van Loon—|[Knocks, opens door, and peeps in.| 
May I come in? 

Lrevineson—| Aside.] That etherizing old fool’s 
back again. 

KoucELMAN—Come in! Mr. Van Loon, it’s always 
an honour to receive you. 

Van Loon—[ Overflowing with enthusiasm.| Oh, it’s 
wonderful! I’m still completely dazed. My dear Van 
Rensselaer, P’ve never seen such paintings! 

RosENGARTEN—None of us have, Mr. Van Loon. 

Van Loon—lIt’s exotic! Simply ecstatic! And to 
think I wasn’t here for the opening, instead of wasting 
my time down there in the Chateau. Why didn’t you 
and the Duchess turn up, Van Rensselaer? My sister 
was expecting you. 

LrvinEeson—-We were sorry to disappoint the Mar- 
quise but my friend King Albert wanted my advice 
about a Gothic statue. 


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Van Loon—King Albert! Of course! Even kings 
hang on Van Rensselaer’s words. The Duchess is out 
there now in the gallery with the Packers. They are 
dreadful people, you know, but so rich, that nobody 
cares. ‘The Duchess is too wonderful! She is explain- 
ing to the poor Packers about the sixth sense in 
Mervyn’s pictures. What a marvellous idea !—she calls 
it Mamas. I felt it too. [Looking from one to the 
other.| I suppose we all feel it. [Door is suddenly 
thrown open by Stein. Enter the Ducuesss or Man- 
DELIEU, with Mr., Mrs. and Miss Pacxrer. They are all 
four covered with war decorations.| Oh, Duchess, here 
you are. I was just quoting you about Mamas! 
Ducuress—Mr. Rosengarten, I’ve brought Mr. and 
Mrs. Packer, and Miss Packer. [Rosrencarten and 
KoucEtmMan bow ceremoniously.| Good afternoon, Mr. 
Kougelman. [Hffervescing with enthusiasm.| Why, 
there’s never been such an Exhibition! The papers are 
going crazy about it. It’s marvellous! It’s too won- 
derful, Van Rensselaer !—but you’re never enthusiastic. 
LrvinEson—My enthusiasm is in my Mervyn book. 
Ducuress—You know, Mrs. Packer, Mr. Van Rens- 
selaer-Levineson’s wonderful book on Mervyn’s art will 
appear in a few days. Oh! but I forgot. Van Rens- 
selaer, you don’t know Mr. and Mrs. Packer and their 
charming daughter. Think of not knowing Mr. and 
Mrs. Packer, who have recently joined the ranks of 
our most famous collectors! Haven’t you, Mr. Packer? 
Pacxer—|[ With self-conscious modesty.| Ive been 
told that I have some good things in my collection. 
Ducuess—[Sparkling with animation.| How mod- 
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est! Now, isn’t he modest? All great men are modest, 
you know. 

Lrvineson—lI haven’t yet had the pleasure of seeing 
your collection, Mr. Packer, but I know of it, of 
course. Your Greco is the finest one outside the Prado. 

Ducuess—And Miss Packer, you know, Mr. Rosen- 
garten, has amazing talent. She’s a sculptress. Her 
heads are wonderful—simply wonderful! She’s going 
to be our greatest American sculptress. Aren’t you, 
Miss Packer? 

Miss Pacxer—Oh, Duchess, you embarrass me! But 
I would love to do your head some day. 

Mrs. Packer—[With strong nasal twang.| My 
daughter really has great talent, if she would only 
keep at it. Mr. Packer and I just love art. 

RosENGARTEN—|Suavely.| I can see you do, Mrs. 
Packer. 

KovucretmMan—We all worship before the same shrine. 

Van Loon—Art is my religion. 

Ducuess—|[ Picking up édition de luxe of MrErvyn, 
edited by Koucretman & Co., in which there is a fron- 
tispiece photograph of Mrervyn.| Oh! there’s your 
édition de luxe of Mervyn. What a beautiful photo- 
graph of him! Look at the atma-vidia in those eyes; 
and that sensitive mouth. What intellect in that sad 
smile. [Handing book to Van Loon.] See, Normie, 
what a marvellous head! 

Van Loon—[T'aking book, with fervour.| Beau- 
tiful! Inspiring! 

Ducuress—You see, it’s a new era. The war’s 
changed everything. Men are no longer the same. 

Van Loon—[Sententiously.| Humanity has at last 
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come into its own. The reign of altruism has begun. 

Ducurss—Yes, we’re ascending. There’s an awaken- 
ing on all sides—everywhere; and Mervyn is express- 
ing this evolution—this new-world spirit—in his art. 

Miss Pacxer—|Preciously.| Art is always pro- 
phetic. 

Ducurss—And to think I discovered such a genius. 

RosEncAarTEN—|[Chivalrously.| Duchess, may I be 
allowed to say it’s not surprising? 

Van Loon—[Handing book on to others. To 
Ducuess:]| Now, Gloria, do explain to us about 
Mamas; it’s such an amazing idea. 

Ducuress—The word just came, for when I first saw 
his pictures I had an entirely new sensation, an 
awakening of a new sense as it were, and of course, 
knowing the Hindoo word Mamas—you all know the 
word Mamas—meaning the sixth sense, the idea flashed 
through my brain that it was Mamas I was feeling for 
the first time. 

RosENGARTEN—|[Encouragingly.| It’s a kind of 
mental glow, isn’t it, Duchess? 

Ducuess—That’s it; I always feel it here on the top 
of my head. 

Van Loon—How strange! I always feel it just 
over my eyebrows. [Touches forehead. | 

Ducuess—[ With veiled irony.| You, of course, 
know the word Mamas, Mr. Packer, don’t you? 

Packer—Well—eh—to tell you the truth—eh—I 
—eh 

Mrs. Pacxer—T[Hastily coming to his assistance. | 
I don’t think Mr. Packer has had time to study much 

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Hindoo philosophy, but my daughter and I are well 
acquainted with the word. 

Miss Pacxer—lI felt “Mamas” in the same place 
the Duchess did. [Raising hand above hat. | 

Van Loon—[T'o0 Rosencarten, but intended for 
DucueEss to hear.| The Duchess is certainly the most 
astounding woman of this epoch. 

RosEencaRTEN—|[Same play.| Or of any other, Mr. 
Van Loon. 

Ducurss—[ Who has suddenly caught sight of Vir- 
gin, edges nearer to Levineson. Under her breath. | 
The Virgin’s new, isn’t it? 

Lrevineson—|[ Aside to Ducuess.] Yes; by Della 
Quercia; fifteenth-century, Sienese school. Beautiful. 

Ducurss—[ Aside to Lrvineson.| I thought so, 
but wasn’t sure. [Walking with assurance towards 
Virgin. Aloud.| What a beautiful Cinque Cento 
Virgin! She’s certainly one of the finest Della Quercias 
I’ve ever seen. 

KovucetMan—Duchess, I’m completely dazzled by 
your erudition. 

Pacxer—| Aside to daughter, anxiously.| Patsy, 
for God’s sake, who is Della—eh—thingumagig? 

Miss Pacxer—[Under her breath to father.] <A 
celebrated Italian sculptor of the fifteenth century. 

Mrs. Packrer—l’ve always just adored Della Quiza. 
His Virgins are just too sweet. 

PackEr—Yes; it’s a very fine example. [Walking 
towards Virgin, affecting air of connoisseur. | 

KovcreLmMan—|[Seeing possibility of sale.| And in 
beautiful state of preservation, Mr. Packer. [Making 
sweeping gestures, with thumb extended, as if model- 
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ling tn the air.| You see the line of the drapery 
[Telephone rings; he hastily makes signs to Rosrn- 
GARTEN to answer, and continues in earnest conver- 
sation. | 

RosencartEN—[Unhooking telephone. | Hullo! 
Hullo! Yes, the Duchess of Mandelieu is here. Her 
maid?—-a moment, please. [7'0 Ducuesss.|] Duchess, 
your maid would like to speak to you. 

Van Loon—[Parading his intimacy.| Oh, I know 
what that is, Gloria; it’s “Pasht, who has green beryls 
for his eyes.” 

Ducuess—|Hastening to telephone.| Oh, my be- 
loved cat! You know, Mrs. Packer, I can’t stand 
being separated from my mystical sphinx for more 
than an hour or two without having my maid telephone 
me how he is. [Puts receiver to ear.| Allo! oui, owl, 
bien! trés bien! Now be careful, Thompson; don’t let 
Pasht get in a draught. [Hooks wp telephone. | 

Van Loon—|[ With earnest appreciation.| Extraor- 
dinary woman, Thompson! 

Miss Pacxker—There’s nothing like an English maid. 

Ducuess—[Laughing.| Oh, but she’s French! 

Miss Pacxer—[ With great surprise.| French? 

Van Loon—The Duchess always calls her maids 
Thompson, no matter what their nationality. It’s too 
amusing—after Loyal Painless Thompson, the pill per- 
son, you know. 

Ducuerss—But, of course, Normie, she is loyal, pain- 
less and sugar-coated, and then the name Thompson— 
Thompson means maid, just as to me the name Perkins 
means butler. Ive always called my butlers Perkins. 
It was so dull of Shakespeare to say, “What’s in a 

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name?” Why, everything’s in a name! Isn’t it, Van 
Rensselaer? 

Lrevineson—[Visibly annoyed.| That depends 
slightly on the name. 

Ducuerss—lI’m sure, for instance, if Landru had been 
called either Perkins or Thompson, he never would 
have butchered his wives. [General laughter.| <A 
Thompson might wear my silk stockings, or a Perkins 
might smoke the Duke’s cigars, but they would never 
do anything wickeder than that. 

Van Loon—[To0 Miss Packer.|] She has the ten- 
derest and most humane heart. I wish you could hear 
her defending the Bolsheviks. I don’t quite go as far 
as that myself, although I’m a Socialist, and believe in 
equality, and all that kind of thing. 

Miss Packer—[T'o Van Loon.| Oh! I’m a Social- 
ist, too, of course, but father is too funny about it; 
he says that Democracy is sacred, but that Socialism 
is all—er—damn nonsense. [| Giggling. | 

DucueEss—Now, Van Rensselaer, when are we going 
to meet our great Mervyn? Mr. Rosengarten prom- 
ised to have him here to-day. I know he hates meeting 
people, but still 

RosENGARTEN-——I’m afraid he does, Duchess; but he 
assured me that he would be here at half past four. 
He’s perfectly vague; he simply doesn’t live in this 
world at all. 

Ducuess—Naturally—of course not. He couldn’t 
paint like that if he did. But you really must have 
him here. We’ll be back in a few minutes. Come into 
the gallery, Van Rensselaer; I want to look at the 
Mervyns again—it’s an obsession, an intoxication. 
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LrvryEson—Yes—ah—we might do that. 

Ducuess—[T'o the Packers, who are solemnly 
grouped in admiration before Indians.| Ah, those 
Indians! those glorious Indians! I have two beautiful 
ones, Mr. Packer. I was the first to buy them, wasn’t 
I, Mr. Rosengarten? They’re pure Egyptian in senti- 
ment; perfectly exotic! 

[Ewit, followed by Levineson. | 

Van Loon—[Immediately assuming a grand man- 
ner in absence of Ducuess and Levineson. To Mars. 
Pacxer.| How I would love to be able to buy another 
one. What sincerity of line. I was among the very 
first to appreciate them, You have read, of course, 
Van Rensselaer-Levineson’s exquisite book on the 
Indians? I 

Miss Pacxer—Oh yes; like all his books, it gives 
one a unique insight into art. He’s certainly the great- 
est critic since Ruskin. [Dropping her voice.| Tm 
so anxious for father to buy them. [Indicating 
Indians. | 

Van Loon—[Sympathetically.| He must. Ill help 
you. [Alouwd.] There are only a few left outside pri- 
vate collections and museums. 

Mrs. Pacxer—And just think, they used to be in 
front of every cigar store in America! My! If we 
only could have appreciated them then! 

RosENcarTEN—Mrs. Packer, it’s always that way. 
Think of the great Guardi, who sold his pictures on 
the piazza in Venice for a bottle of wine; and a Guardi 
now brings fifty thousand dollars or more. And the 
divine Watteau, who painted theatre scenery for three 
francs a week. 

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Pacxer—[Delighted at being able to joi in.| I 
remember what Mr. Morgan paid for those panels by 
Watteau. 

Miss Pacxer—|[Impatiently.| Oh, father, you’re 
thinking of Fragonard, aren’t you? 

Packer—|[Chagrined.| Yes, of course; I meant 
Fragonarde! 

RosENcaRTEN—And poor Fragonard died neglected 
and forgotten, too. 

Mrs. Packer—Poor Fragynarde! He was such a 
perfectly lovely painter. 

RosENcARTEN—The Indians, you see, are really the 
basis of American art; and for that reason, aside from 
their esthetic value, are a corner-stone in the world’s 
art history. Van Rensselaer-Levineson in his book re- 
fers to them as American primitives. 

Van Loon—[ With full consciousness of social and 
artistic superiority.| Personally, it’s only in primi- 
tive art that I find soul-satisfaction. 

Miss Packer—Oh, how right you are, Mr. Van Loon! 

Van Loon—In my modest collection I have an 
exquisite little “Paleo” horse etched on stone. [Most 
patronizingly.| That’s the Paleolithic period, you 
know; Van Rensselaer and I always call them ‘‘Paleos.” 
I have a Neolithic sepulchral pot too. 

RosENcARTEN—And your sacred Egyptian cats are 
superb, Mr. Van Loon. 

Van Loon—Yes, they really are. I’m sure you would 
be delighted with my Sung and Han pieces too, and my 
Aztec masks; but I must admit that I have a great 
weakness for my tear vases from the Euphrates Valley ; 
they are so symbolical. 

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Miss Pacxer—[Preciously sentimental.| Think of 
the tears that have trickled into them. 

Van Loon—|[With reminiscent bathos.| I suppose 
you'll think me absurd, but when my Japanese night- 
ingale died, that had sung to me for twelve long years, 
the Duchess and I let our tears fall into them. 

Mrs. Packer—|[ Wagging her head with ingratiating 
sympathy.| I call that real touching, Mr. Van Loon. 

Van Loon—|[Loftily.| No. I’ve rarely cared for 
anything modern. In fact ’m amazed to see the effect 
Mervyn has upon me. 

RosencarteEN—Ah! but Mervyn’s art has the divine 
simplicity, which you, like all great connoisseurs, 
cherish. 

PacxEr—[T'o0 KovucELMANn, aside, with suave com- 
mercial voice.| Id like to know how much you're ask- 
ing for your pair of Indians? 

KoucELMan—To be quite honest, Mr. Packer, I can’t 
face the thought of selling them. They’ve become so 
rare; it’s practically impossible to get them now. 

Pacxer—[Abashed.| But that’s why I want them. 
Well, then, how about the Virgin? 

KovucrtmMan—Now, I would bitterly hate to dis- 
appoint you, Mr. Packer, but Mr. Van Rensselaer- 
Levineson says it would be a sin for such a Della 
Quercia not to go to the Louvre or the Metropolitan 
Museum. 

Pacxer—I wish you’d reconsider it; I would so 
much like to have these three pieces for my collection. 
Don’t you really think you might be able to part with 
at least one of the Indians? 

Kovucetman—|[Pointing to picture on wall.) I 

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would so much rather sell you that beautiful Van Dyck. 

Pacxer—|Fretfully.] All my friends have Van 
Dycks, but none of them have Indians. 

KovucrtmMan—Ah, that’s just it; they’re so rare. 

Ducuess—|[Suddenly rushing in, carrying picture, 
and followed by Lrvineson, who is visibly annoyed. 
Excitedly.| I couldn’t help it, Van Rensselaer; I’ve 
done it now anyhow. I don’t know what you’ll say, 
Mr. Rosengarten, but I just stole it off the wall, and 
I’m going to take it home with me in the motor. I 
simply can’t live without it. Look at Van Rensselaer! 
He’s perfectly furious. 

Lrvinrson—|Eaasperated.| Well, it’s not done, 
you know—it’s simply not done in the middle of an 
Exhibition! 

Ducuess—|Persuasively.| Now, my dear J.R., 
you'll let me take it, won’t you? Won’t you, Mr. 
Kougelman? 

KovucELMan—How could we refuse you anything, 
Duchess? 

Ducuess—|[Echibiting picture to admiring group. | 
Look at it! I understand it all now through the pic- 
ture. Mervyn calls it Kinstein’s Relativity. I look at 
the picture, go into a state of Mamas, and the idea of 
relativity becomes perfectly clear. Normie, look! 
See how it balances—this mass with that mass, this 
spot of colour with that. What psychism of patterns! 
[Catching Van Loon by the arm.| And the relative 
flight of clouds there gives the sense of velocity and 
time. All this here is space. Time and space. Space 
and time. There is Einstein’s entire theory elucidated. 
Amazing! Incredible! [Sinking into chair. ] 

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Van Loon—Yes, yes. Marvellous, marvellous! 
[ Aside to others.| ‘The dear Duchess is so psychic. 
[ Aside to Levineson, eagerly.| Van Rensselaer, come 
in and select two with me. I’m afraid they'll all be 
gone. Are they asking enormous prices? Please come. 
[Grasps his arm. | 

Lrevineson—|Petulantly.| Another day, another 
day. [Van Loon drags him out.] 

Ducuress—Ouf! I’m simply bankrupt. Here, Mr. 
Kougelman. [Hands him catalogue.| YVve marked on 
the catalogue the ones I want. I’ve bought six, but 
I’d like to have bought all of them. 

Miss Packrr—Oh, Duchess, I congratulate you, and 
how I envy you! 

Mrs. Packrr—Ezra, you must buy some immedi- 
ately. [Aside to him.| We'd be the first to have them 
in New York. 

Kovucetman—| Reading from catalogue.| Let me 
see. No. 10, Ideagenous Invisibility; No. 18, Elliptical 
Ectoplasmic Elusiveness. 

Miss Packer—How geometrically fluidic! 

Kovucerman—No. 17, Pentadactylic Preadamite 
Postulates; No. 18, Subliminal Vallisneriacee. 

Rosrencarten—|[Aside.| Subliminal Jack-assery. 

Kovucrtman—No. 29, Virginal Vertigo. 

Mrs. Pacxer—I[Ecstatically.| Virginal Vertigo. 
Oh, my, what pure imagination! 

Miss Pacxer—It’s so pagan. 

Kovcrtman—No. 33, Einstein’s Relativity. 

RosencartEN—Let me congratulate ‘you, Duchess, 
on the wisdom and sagacity of your selection. [They 

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all congratulate her. Aside to Kovcreiman.] Start 
Mervyn playing the flute. 
[Eavit KoucEtman right. | 

Ducurss—Now, Mr. Packer, when you move into 
your wonderful New York’ palace, you must have some 
Mervyns. 

Pacxer—|[ Aside to Ducuess.| Yes, but they are 
so indifferent here. I’ve tried to buy the Indians and 
the Virgin. They don’t seem to want to sell anything. 

Ducuerss—Let me arrange it for you; I always have 
difficulty too. ‘They are dealers of course, but they 
love art. 

[Enter Van Loon, in great elation, waving 
catalogue, followed by Lrvinxson. | 

Van Loon—l’ve done it! Dve bought two! 

Ducurss—That’s splendid, Normie! Which ones? 

Van Loon—[Triuwmphantly.| Spectro-psychic Dal- 
liance, and No. 53, Subjective Pathos in Trigonometry. 
[Congratulatory exclamations from all. ] 

[Re-enter Koucretman, leaving door ajar. | 

Ducuess—Bravo, Normie! But where is Mervyn, 
Mr. Rosengarten? I must be leaving soon, as I am 
opening a Charity Bazaar for our poor blind soldiers. 
That’s why we are all wearing our war decorations. 
I’m to meet the Duke there. Mr. and Mrs. Packer, 
you know, were such wonderful patriots. [With the 
usual ironical undercurrent.| Mrs. Packer ran a hos- 
pital in France, while Mr. Packer ran the biggest muni- 
tion factory in America. 

Mrs. Pacxer—| Melting under ducal compliment. | 
We all tried to do our bit, but your hospital, Duchess, 
was much bigger than mine. 


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[Sound of flute is heard from adjoining room.] 
Ducuress—Why, what’s that? I hear a flute. 
RosencartEN—|[Mysteriously.] It’s he—Mervyn! 

When he’s not painting, he plays the flute. I'll see if 
I can persuade him to come in for a few moments. 
[Arriving at door right; dramatically.| You’ll find 
him as extraordinary as his pictures. [Ewit right.] 

Kovcrtman—[Endeavouring to conceal painful 
apprehension.| Of course he’s most eccentric, most 
eccentric. 

Ducuess—Eccentric! But naturally, Mr. Kougel- 
man. Imagine a genius being commonplace like us. 
This is a rare moment! 

Mrs. Pacxer—lI’ve met any number of Grand Dukes 
and Princes, but never a real genius before. 

Van Loon—What a memorable day! [Aside.] The 
creator of my Subjective Pathos in Trigonometry. 

RosENGARTEN—| Re-enters, holding Mrervyn’s arm. 
Mervyn is effectively dressed in dark well-cut clothes, 
which have been carefully selected by RosEncartTen, 
with a view to producing the desired impression. He 
wears a Byronic collar, soft white double cuffs, rolling 
back over coat sleeves, and a flowing black silk tie. His 
patent leather shoes, too, are of the best make. He 
wears white socks. His hair has been allowed to grow 
longer and is bobbed below his ears, after the fashion 
of the Italian primitives. They advance slowly to cen- 
tre and stop. RosENGARTEN steps aside, and with great 
solemnity makes a full-arm gesture of introduction: | 
Duchess, I present the Master. 

Kovucretman—| Aside.] Oh, my God! I feel com- 
pletely paralysed. 

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RosENGARTEN—Mr. and Mrs. Packer, Miss Packer, 
Mr. Van Loon—The Master. Mr. Van Rensselaer- 
Levineson you know. 

Ducuess—[ Leaves chair, quickly steps forward and 
shakes hands.) Master, we were afraid you might 
disappoint us again. 

RosENcARTEN—The Duchess is your fairy-god- 
mother, Mervyn, and she lives in your world of dreams 
and fairies. 

Mervyn—|[Naively.] But she is much too young 
and beautiful to be a fairy-godmother. 

KovcrLtmMan—[Under his breath, with suppressed 
delight.| Good! Good! [Rosrncarten frowns at 
him. | 

Ducuess—[Radiantly.| I see, Master, that you 
not only have genius in art, but genius in chivalry. 

Mervyn—|[Dreamily.| Chivalry! What is chiv- 
alry? 

KovucretmMan—| Aside, despairingly.| Oh, my God! 
my God! 

RosENGARTEN—|Quickly meeting situation.] Ex- 
actly! What is chivalry? And with what fine irony 
you have asked that question in this epoch of commer- 
cial vulgarity. 

Ducuress—Oh, how adorable! How clever! [To 
LevinEson, with sly taunting smile.| You see, Van 
Rensselaer, Mr. Mervyn finds the word chivalry obso- 
lete, as it is of course, unless we resurrect it. Now 
there’s a theme for a book—a wonderful idea! I never 
thought of it before! And the Master gave it to me in 
a sentence. A book about words which we constantly 
use, but which have lost their true significance. 

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Van Loon—Yes, it could be called The Graveyard 
of Words. You must write it, Van Rensselaer. 

Levineson—[Dryly.]| Dm no grave-digger. 

Rosrencarten—[Humorously.]| Why, no; he’s our 
obstetrician of new art. 

Mervyn—|[With same naive simplicity, which is 
interpreted by all as a whimsical and mystical manifes- 
tation of genius.| Do you believe in fairies, Duchess? 

Ducuerss—Of course we all do, except Van Rens- 
selaer, who’s so cynical. He only believes in himself. 
But we believe, don’t we, Normie? 

Van Loon—I should say we did 

Ducuess—And you, Patricia, and Mrs. Packer, I’m 
sure you believe in spirits and fairies? 

Mrs. Pacxer—T[ With conviction.| Oh, T’ve seen 
them often, and ghosts too! But don’t ask Mr. 
Packer; he thinks it’s all da—eh—nonsense. 

Ducurss—Nonsense! Why, Mr. Packer, aren’t you 
ashamed of yourself? I was reading only this morning 
a long article in the paper written by a celebrated 
scientist, who saw blue fairies in Canada, and green 
fairies in California, and in New Zealand he discovered 
colonies of them in all colours. 

Van Loon—I saw another article in The Daily Mail 
with actual photographs of fairies taken by a cele- 
brated scientist in Scotland. 

Miss Packer—aAnd those wonderful photographs of 
ectoplasmic emanations! 

Mrs. Packer—Science is just simply marvellous. 

Mervyn—|[T'o Ducuess, as before.| And do you 
wear a high crown, and wave your wand and have every- 


thing happen you wish? [General laughter. | 





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Levingeson—[ Approaching a smile.] She most cer- 
tainly does. 

Van Loon—Yes, the Duchess wears the highest and 
most beautiful crown in Paris; and when she waves her 
great black fan at the Opera we all tremble, I assure 
you. [Continued laughter. | 

Ducuess—[Shaking her finger at him coquettishly. | 
Now, Normie! [Looking at her watch.| Oh, but we 
must be going. We can’t keep our poor blind soldiers 
waiting. But, Mr. Rosengarten, why don’t you bring 
Mr. Mervyn to the concert to-night, which we’re hay- 
ing for our Poilus after the Bazaar? 

Van Loon—[T0 Mervyn.] Oh yes, you must come! 

Ducuess—You really must! [She suddenly strikes 
a pose, and starts declaiming.| For they gave their 
sight for their country, so that our political leaders 
might see more clearly. And their sacrifice was not in 
vain; as we are now entering a new epoch of brotherly 
love, self-sacrifice and altruism. [Asswming normal 
voice.| 'That’s the way I begin my opening address. 

Atit—Bravo, Duchess! Bravo! 

Ducurss—[T'o0 Mrervyn.] And you, Master, have 
also given your sight to us, so that we may see the 
truth more clearly by looking at your inspired can- 
vases. [Seizing his hand.| Good-bye! Thank you 
for the wonderful things you have said, and the inspira- 
tion you have given us. Your imagination has illumi- 
nated a moment of Pandean fancy, with rhythmic per- 
suasiveness. [MeErvyn smiles impassively. | 

Mrs. Pacxer—Good-bye! It must be perfectly 
wonderful to be a real genius. 

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Mervyn—|[Sadly.] I would much rather be a real 
man. 

Miss Pacxer—[Shaking hands.| I shall always 
remember your rare and beautiful thoughts of this 
afternoon, which take one out of a world of monotone 
into the iridescent splendour of reflection. 

Van Loon—I’m proud to tell you, Master, that I 
now own your great picture, Subjective Pathos in 
Trigonometry. Marvellous! It was a revelation to 
listen to you. [Going towards door.| He has a smile 
of radiant twilight. I’ve never felt so subjective. 

[LzevinEeson gives Mervyn paternal pat on the 
arm. | 

Ducuess—[From doorway.| Come on, Van Rens- 
selaer! come on, everybody, we’re going to be late. 
[Exeunt Pacxer, Mrs. Pacxrer, Van Loon and Lev- 
INESON. DucuHeEss, running back into room, aside to 
RosENGARTEN:| Oh, Mr. Rosengarten, I’ve just had 
a great idea. We must take him to America and have 
an Exhibition in your New York galleries. Mr. Packer 
must give him a ball in his magnificent new house. But 
we'll talk of all that later. . . . He’s marvellous! per- 
fectly marvellous! He speaks entirely in symbols, 
doesn’t he? But I must run. [7Z'o Miss Packer, who 
is lingering on threshold.| My dear, I feel as if I’d 
met a saint. 

Miss Pacxer—[Following the Ducuess out.| He 
looks and talks like a Messiah. 

[ Exeunt both. | 

Kovcrtman—|[Collapsing into chair, and mopping 
brow.| Thank God that’s over. I haven’t been so 
nervous since my wedding day. 


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RosEencARTEN—| Patting Mervyn on back.| Good 
boy, Mervyn; you did very well indeed, and we’re both 
much pleased with you. 

Merrvyn—I’m so glad, Mr. Rosengarten. I try to 
do everything you tell me, because I love you and Mr. 
Kougelman. 

RosENGARTEN—Yes, dear boy, we want to do every- 
thing we can to make you happy. Here’s a book with 
a lot of pretty pictures. Sit down over there and look 
at it. [Mervyn sits down facing Virgin, and looks at 
book. | 

Sremn—[Silently opens door, thrusts in head and 
whispers:| Oh, Mr. Kougelman, I think I’ve landed a 
gentleman from Buffalo—a Mr. Price-Dillen—with a 
number of Mervyns! But you’d better come out and 
clinch it. He’s still a little wobbly. 

KouceLMan—AIll right! All right! P’ll come directly. 
Oh! Stein, work that up about the Duchess taking the 
picture off the wall and get it into the morning’s press. 

Stein—Righto! [Nods knowingly. Evit.] 

KovuceLMan—|[Turning to RosENcARTEN, with 
amused chuckle.| I wish you could have seen Packer’s 
expression when I refused to sell him the Indians, and 
told him that the Virgin was destined for the Metro- 
politan. He’s hot after them now, and will swallow 
any price to get them. 

Rosrencarten—Well done, old man! for when he 
finally succeeds in persuading us to part with them, 
Kougelman and Co. will not only receive Packer’s 
cheque, but Packer’s gratitude as well. [Kovucrrtman, 
wagging his head and still chuckling with self-satisfac- 
tion, goes into gallery. To Mervyn, who is absorbed 
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in book:| Well, Mervyn, how about the circus to- 
night? Would you like to go? 
Mrrvyn—Oh, I would love it! 
RosENcARTEN—Good! We'll start in a few minutes. 
[Withdraws into side room and turns on electric light. 
Mervyn is left alone in the dusk. A shaft of light from 
open door falls on statue of Virgin, suggesting miracu- 
lous illumination. | 
Mervyn—| Looking up from book.| I wonder what 
mother is doing now, and if old Ellen is thinking of me. 
Everybody is so kind to me here; but sometimes I 
would like so much to go home. I feel so lonely when 
bed-time comes and mother isn’t here to say, “Happy 
dreams, John, dear.” I don’t see why they call me 
Mervyn, when my name is John. And why do they 
all call me ‘‘the Master”? No one but old Ellen ever 
called me Master. [As he turns his head he notices 
Virgin.| Oh! there’s the blessed Virgin which old Ellen 
always prayed to in our village church. How pretty 
she is! That’s just the way my beautiful mother used 
to look. My little cousin Marie comes to me like that 
too, in my dreams, and smiles to me so sweetly. I 
wonder if God has sent her down to me. Perhaps if 
she hadn’t gone to Heaven I would have become a man 
sooner, and then we would have been married, wouldn’t 
we, dear Marie? Qh! why did you leave me? for you’re 
the only playmate I ever had, and I miss you all the 
time. [RosENGARTEN reappears on threshold in hat 
and overcoat. On left arm is Mrrvyn’s coat. He car- 
ries his cane and Mervyn’s hat in right hand. He 
stops suddenly, and listens to Mervyn’s soliloquy. For 
the first and only time the expression of his face betrays 
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profound sadness.| I always remember the evening 
we sat under the cherry-tree together, and you took my 
hand and smiled to me the way my mother does. I 
wonder why the big tears were in your eyes when I felt 
so very, very happy and grown-up. And there was 
light everywhere, and everything was so easy to under- 
stand; and then you went away to live with my father 
in Heaven, and the light seemed to go away too, 
Marie... and I felt like a little boy again. . . [Con- 
tinues day-dream in silence. | | 

RosENcGARTEN—| Leaning against door, looks from 
Virgin to Mervyn, and in a low melodious voice of 
deep melancholy recites Poe’s poem, “To One in Par- 
adise”’: | 


“Thou wast that all to me, love, 
For which my soul did pine— 

A green isle in the sea, love, 
A fountain, and a shrine, 

All wreathed in fairy fruits and flowers, 
And all the flowers were mine. 


Ah, dream too bright to last! 
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise, 
But to be overcast!” 


[With emotion.| And who will ever know that I have 
carried that poem in my heart all these years? [After 
a moment he suddenly throws off his reverie, and looks 
at Mervyn compassionately.| Poor helpless Goy. 
My heart goes out to you; but when I think of what 
your race has done to mine, I feel justified in making 
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dupes and fools of you all. [Turns on electric light by 
door, and enters gaily.| MHere’s your hat and coat, 
Mervyn. And now we’ll have dinner, and then the 
circus. 

Mervyn—|[Jumping up.] Oh yes! the circus—and 
the clown? 

RosEncartEN—|[ Holding out Mervyn’s coat.| Yes 
—the clown. 


CURTAIN 


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ACT III 


New York: four months later. Middle of April, 1920. 
In the magnificent art gallery of Ezra P. Pacx- 
ER’s new Fifth Avenue palace. It is nine o'clock 
on the night of the famous Mamas ball. 

In rear, facing audience, between two massive 
double-door entrances, is a monumental, grandiose 
mantelpiece, designed by Philibert Delorme, with 
superb life-size caryatides and innumerable figures 
in bas-relief, sculptured in marble by Jean Goujon. 
The huge triumphant golden portals, with pilas- 
ters, overdoors and supporting columns, have been 
imported from one of the most sumptuous palaces 
in Genoa. 

They are of rare and superb design, of skilful 
exquisite craftsmanship, and architecturally per- 
fect. They, like the mantelpiece, are noble, sincere, 
generous, joyous, creative, ins piring—magnificent ; 
and are as expressive of their epoch as is our 
self-conscious, sordid, mean, vulgar, pharisaic, 
chaotic art expressive of ours.* 

In the spaces between this glorious hearth and 
the regal doorways, standing on their stone ped- 
estals, are the two cigar-store Indians of the pre- 
vious act, recently acquired by Mr. Packer from 

1 “TI do not think we are stronger, but weaker than men of the 

Middle Ages. The men of the sixteenth century were strong 

men, stronger in brain power than our men.” Thus declared Mr. 

Gladstone in 1892, even before England had fallen into the 

hands of Lloyd George, and before she had degenerated into 


having fair ladies and communist mattoids as Members of Parlia- 
ment. 


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KoucEitMan & Co., for, as Isaac KovcetmMan put 
it, “the mere song of forty thousand dollars, which 
is nothing when one considers that they are rare 
dix-neuviéme examples of the American pre-Civil 
War period.” 

Against the middle of left wall is placed, on a 
beautiful fifteenth-century column, the statue of 
the Virgin, attributed by Van RenssELaERr-LEv- 
INEsON to Jacopo Della Quercia, also recently 
acquired, as a great bargain, by Mr. Packer from 
Kovuceiman’s for fifty thousand dollars; which, 
again, according to Isaac, was “practically giving 
it away,” although he had originally bought it for 
five hundred francs. 

Directly opposite, against right wall, is a beau- 
tiful bronze statue, mounted on pedestal, of a 
young boy by Donatello. Behind these statues 
are hung two rare Gothic tapestries, luminously 
interwoven with gold and silver threads, envelop- 
ing them with a shimmering light of enchantment. 
As one gazes at these two supreme works of art, 
created out of a humorous, mystical, whimsical, 
exuberant love of nature, one realizes how much 
happier humanity must have been in those Gothic 
days of hobgoblins, sprites, elves and gnomes, than 
it is at present, when men have put their faith in 
science, which has now brought them to their knees 
in plumbing and motor sanctuaries to worship in 
front of porcelain-lined altars erected to their 
great God of Comfort. To my way of thinking, 
even the little Gothic rabbit with his tiny silver 
tail, peeping out from under a gigantic Gothic 

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cabbage in the lower left-hand corner of one of 
these tapestries, is of far greater significance, as 
far as true civilization is concerned, than are all 
the “‘choo-choo cars,’ motors, ocean leviathans, 
electrical clap-traps and plumbing fetishes in the 
entire world. 

On either side of the Virgin and the Donatello 
are long console tables, gems from the Doge’s 
palace. Over them hang rare Venetian mirrors. 
On these four consoles are marvellous Ming vases, 
loot from the royal palace in Pekin, wherein a pot- 
hatted, mob-cringing President, wearing “‘stand- 
ardized suitings,” is now ensconced and, like a mad 
bull in a china shop, bellowing to the “plain 
people” in the raucous, hocus-pocus, croakus, 
democratic chorus of all the other “liberty, equal- 
ity, fraternity,” hugger-mugger Presidents and 
effete, democratic Kings. 

On the walls are hung a single line of “Old 
Masters,” several of which have been pronounced 
of questionable authenticity by the world-famous 
art critic, VAN-RENSSELAER-LEVINESON, who hopes 
to have them shortly replaced by others of his 
own selection. 

On the left wall, in a double row, are about 
twenty pictures of various sizes, by MERvyN. 

The preparations have just been completed for 
the Mamas ball. On the great hearthstone, pro- 
jecting four or five feet into the room, and about 
four inches high, has been set wp a small speaker’s 
platform, two steps above hearth level. The steps 
of platform are carpeted in blue, and the base is 





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solidly banked with white roses and carnations. 
Great masses of Madonna lilies fill corners of room. 
The Virgin is enshrined with lilies of the valley. 
Four great resplendent gold chairs, covered with 
old cramoisy velvet, treasures of Lorenzo the Mag- 
nificent, are placed diagonally to left of platform. 
Behind them are a hundred or more gilt cotillion 
chatrs in rows. Opposite are more rows of cotil- 
lion chairs. The centre of gallery is left empty. 

The great portals in rear open on to a vast con- 
seroatory, in which may be seen Della Robbias, 
Greek vases, and a beautiful fountain by Bar- 
thélemy Prieur. Beyond conservatory one has 
a vista of magnificent salons furnished with old- 
world art treasures of the fourteenth, fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries. 


THE CURTAIN RISES ON AN EMPTY SCENE 


Suddenly the portals to rear right are thrown 
open by two footmen in knee-breeches and pow- 
dered hair. The butler and other footmen are seen 
wn distance. Mrs. Packer, dressed in an elab- 
orate tea-gown, and with a violet silk robe thrown 
over her arm, enters with Miss Packer, who is 
also in tea-gown and is carrying a phantastic 
helmet head-dress surmounted by an imaginary 
white bird with turquoise-blue crest. This bird, 
with outstretched wings, is the symbol of “Mamas- 
ism.” 

Packer, in full evening dress and wearing a 
large white boutonniére, follows, smoking a huge 

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American magnate cigar. The ladies are smoking 
perfumed cigarettes in paper holders of conspicu- 
ous length. 


Pacxer—|[Irritably.| Well, I’m not going to wear 
it at the ball to-night, and that’s the end of it! 

Mrs. Pacxer—|[Petulantly.| Now, Ezra, we’ve 
been working over your helmet for days, and it would 
be just real mean if you won’t wear it. 

Miss Pacxer—[Coazing.| Oh, please, father! Just 
try it on, and you’ll see how well you look init. Here— 
a moment—do let me put it on your head. There! 
[ Placing helmet on his head. | 

Mrs. Packer—My! you look perfectly grand—like 
Lohengreen! 

Miss Packer—Not “green,” mother—Lohengrin. 

Packer—lIt’s all right for Lohengreen or grin, but 
I’ll be damned if I’m going to make a loony gazook 
of myself ! 

Miss Packer—Wait a minute, father; you must see 
the whole effect. Here, put on your robe. Of course 
it doesn’t look right with your evening dress. [She 
puts his cloak on. | 

Packer—|[Admiring himself in mirror.| I don’t 
mind the robe, but I'll be blowed if I’m going to let the 
whole of New York see me with that Mamas-bird- 
business on my nut! 

Mrs. Pacxer—T[Shocked.| Why, Ezra! how can 
you talk that way? It’s almost sac-religious! 

Miss Packer—|Fervently.| It really is sac-relig- 
ious, for this is a cult. It’s the greatest art event of 
the century. Our ball to-night will pass into history. 
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Pacxer—|[T aking off helmet.| Well, if I’m going 
into history, I’m going into it as Ezra P. Packer and 
not as one of those Grand Opera guys, anyhow, Patsy! 

Miss Pacxer—[Snappishly.| Don’t call me Patsy! 
it’s socommon. My name is Patricia, father. [Chang- 
ing tone of voice, ardently.| You don’t seem to realize 
what this means. No one has ever been received in this 
country like Mervyn. Why! from the moment he 
arrived and was met by “the Friends of Art,” in a 
squadron of motor-boats carrying “Mamas” flags, he 
has had one continuous triumph! 

Mrs. Pacxer—T[Ezacitedly.| And the newspapers 
have been full of nothing else. 

Miss Pacxer—lI haven’t yet got over that amazing 
symbolical dance by Isadora’s pupils, which the Duch- 
ess arranged on the pier while Mervyn was landing. 

Mrs. Pacxer—It was so terribly artistic I could 
just hardly stand it! 

Miss Pacxrr—It was even more wonderful than 
Maeterlinck’s Bluebird arrival ! 

Pacxer—Well, art’s all right in its place, but if you 
ask my opinion, this affair has gone too far anyhow. 
When it gets to the point of having Mervyn shoes, 
Mervyn cigars, Mamas corsets, Mamas hats, Mervyn 
pyjamas and God knows what else!—and when I hear 
you and Patricia and all our friends talking about 
nothing but Mamas and Mervyn, Mervyn and Mamas, 
it makes me feel at times as if I were bug-house. 

Mrs. Pacxrr—But think how prominent we’ve all 
become by it, Ezra! There are pages again in to-day’s 
papers about our Mamas ball to-night, with enormous 


pictures of us all. 
203 


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Miss Pacxer—|Ecstatically.| Yes, to-night will 
be the culmination, the apotheosis of spiritual beauty! 
It will be simply sublime! [Nervously.]| But do come, 
mother, it’s getting late, and we must hurry and dress. 

Mrs. Pacxer—|[Indignantly.| Really, Ezra! I 
think it’s too bad to see you acting like this at the last 
moment about your helmet. I’m just that nervous 
about the success of the ball, I’m tremblin’ like a leaf. 

Miss Pacxer—|[Contemptuously.| Never mind, 
mother. Don’t pay any attention to father. He’s 
behaving like a rank materialist and reactionary. 
[Draws mother towards door. | 

Pacxrer—|Defiantly.| It’s a good thing for the 
Packer family that Ezra P. is a materialist! for if 
there were only “Mamas” in his bank account, there 
wouldn’t be much of a ball to-night. [Shouting after 
them.| But V’ll be damned if T’ll be called a reaction- 
ary by anybody! [Haveunt Mrs. Packer and daughter 
disdainfully. He picks up helmet and puts tt on before 
mirror.| I’m sorry to disappoint the womenfolk, but 
I won’t make myself ridiculous for them, anyhow! 
[Admiring himself before mirror.| It’s not bad!— 
quite becoming! I suppose I do look rather like Lohen- 
green. But what would my Directors say if they saw 
their President like this? [Coquetting with himself. ] 
No one will look better in it than I do, though. No, I 
can’t wear it! [Takes it off reluctantly. Looking 
towards Mrrvyn’s pictures.| I wonder what all this 
“Mamas” thing really is, anyhow. To be perfectly 
honest, I’ve never felt a sixth sense, and I’ve done 
pretty well in life with five. I’ve looked at these darn 
pictures until I’m dizzy without ever having that 
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famous glow on the top of my head, over my eyebrows, 
or any other damn place. I swear I can’t make head 
or tail out of any of them! I wouldn’t even know if 
they were upside down! [Seeking reassurance.| But 
there’s Levineson, who is considered the greatest critic 
in the world, whose opinion is undisputed. He’s written 
a book about them. And there’s Rosengarten and 
Kougelman, both damned shrewd business men—and all 
the others. And yet Ezra P. Packer is no fool, I can 
tell you. Look at the newspaper articles, and the 
magazines, all calling it the new art, and having this 
Mervyn fellow even greater than Raphael! And if I 
were to say what I really thought, I’d be laughed at 
as an ignoramus. [Looking towards the Indians.| I 
can understand the Indians all right, although I don’t 
see why they weren’t recognized as works of Art while 
they were in front of all the cigar stores. They could 
then have been bought for a few dollars apiece. And 
to think I had to get the Duchess to actually beg Kou- 
gelman to sell them to me now for forty thousand 
dollars the pair! Damn it! it might be a good idea to 
begin collecting barber-poles before they, too, are rec- 
ognized as works of Art. [Looking at Virgin.] And 
imagine that blessed Virgin over there stickin’ me for 
fifty thousand dollars! This being an art collector is 
no joke; but it gets you to the top of society all right. 
The ball in my new palace here to-night will cinch it. 
To be in the swim these days, you have to be artistic. 
My daughter understands. She’s a clever girl to have 
taken up sculpture. [Dolefully.| Although I did have 
to pony up a neat sum to that shrewd old Jew of a 

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French Senator for landing the bust she did in the 
Luxembourg Museum. 
[Enter Oscar CapMAn, with letter in his hand. | 

CapMAN—Excuse me, Mr. Packer, there are a num- 
ber of reporters waiting in the corridor. Would you 
like to see them? ‘They are most anxious to interview 
a member of the family. 

Packer—Nop! tell ’em it’s impossible, as we’re all 
so busy; but you can give ’em the list of guests, descrip- 
tion of costumes, and all the rest of it. 

CapMan—Very good, Mr. Packer. They are asking 
the significance of the Mamas ballet. What shall I 
say? 

Pacxer—|Aside.| Blessed if I know. [Aloud.] 
Now look here, Cadman, you’ve seen the rehearsals 
oftener than I have; what do you make of it yourself? 

CapMan—|Embarrassed.| Well, sir—you see—er 
—I suppose—er—the idea—er 

PackEr—| Aside.| He’s in the same box as I am. 
[ Aloud.] Well? 

CapMan—lIt’s—er—the new art rhythm—ainterpret- 
ing higher mathematics in dancing. 





PackEr—Very good. Go on. 

CapMan—|[Sheepishly, as if repeating a lesson.| It 
was Miss Packer who explained to me that—er— 
through repetitions of symmetrical and asymmetrical 
movements,—er—instinctolatescent sensations were re- 
leased by dynamic infiltrations of objective emotion and 
fused with subliminal phenomena, thereby creating 
Mamas, or the sixth sense. 

PackEr—|[Dryly.| Isee. Hum! most intelligible! 
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[ Aggressively.] Cadman, how long have you been my 
secretary? 

Capman—|[Surprised.| Why, about three years, 
Mr. Packer. 

Pacxer—Are you satisfied with your job? 

CapMan—|[Intimidated.| Entirely, sir. 

Packer—|Sternly.]| Well, then, if you wish to 
continue with me, you had better leave Art and Mamas 
to the ladies. Is that a letter for me in your hand? 

CapMan—|[Nervously.| Oh yes, sir. I was bring- 
ing it to you. It was just left here by Peppino Ange- 
lino. It’s marked “Private.” 

Packer—You mean the little sculptor man, who 
works in my daughter’s studio? What’s he writing to 
me about? [Takes letter and begins to open it.| As 
soon as Mr. Rosengarten and Mr. Kougelman come, 
send them up here immediately. On second thoughts, 
have those reporters wait until they come. 

CapMan—Very good, Mr. Packer. [Evwit.] 

Pacxer—| Reading letter.] ‘Mr. Packer, Noble 
Sir! I hears the bust I make for your honourable 
daughter in her studio, was buyed by Luxembourg 
Museum. I did not before thinks I was so great sculp- 
tor, and now as I be so great, I thinks it only fair, for 
you to pay me twenty-five thousand dollars, for this 
great honour, coming to your daughter and family 
through me. If you don’t pay to me these moneys imme- 
diately, I will obliged be to tell all peoples how great 
sculptor I am, and it was me who made the head and not 
your honourable daughter, who can make nothings. 
Respectfully yours, Peppino Angelino.” Hump! The 
little blackmailing Dago! That’s pleasant. It will cost 

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five or ten thousand at least to shut him up. At all 
events, one bust in the Luxembourg Gallery is enough 
artistic fame for the Packer family at present. [Cap- 
MAN throws open door and admits RosENGARTEN and 
KovucEetman, both in evening dress.| Ah, here you are! 
I’ve been expecting you! But where’s our genius? 
[Shaking hands. | 

RosENGARTEN—Oh, he’ll be here, Mr. Packer, al- 
though geniuses are apt to arrive too late or too early, 
you know. 

KovucEetmMan—Mr. Packer, this will certainly be a 
memorable night in Art. 

PacxEer—lI hope it’ll go through all right. Oh, by 
the way, Mr. Rosengarten, there are a number of news- 
paper men downstairs. I'll have them sent up. Will 
you and Mr. Kougelman be kind enough to give them 
some notes and put them wise on the “Mamas” ballet? 

RosENGARTEN—Of course; with pleasure! 

Pacxrer—lIt’s so important for the newspapers to 
get it correctly. See you later. [With wave of hand. 
Exit. | 

RosENcARTEN—|[T'0 Kovucretman.| Packer doesn’t 
seem to realize that the power of the Press is in getting 
everything incorrectly. 

KovcrtmMan—Correctly or incorrectly. I only hope 
that “Mamas” doesn’t get me. It wouldn’t take an 
awful lot to make me believe in it all myself. 

RosENGARTEN—| Whimsically.| But why not? To 
be able to believe in anything is such a luxury. 

KovcretmMan—There was no luxury in the nightmare 
I had last night, I can tell you. 

RosencarteNn—Nightmare! Really! 

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KovucrLtMAaN—I should say so. I dreamed I was 
suddenly surrounded in our galleries by a tribe of 
wooden Indians doing a war dance, and brandishing 
enormous Henry Clay cigars, and while they were 
scalping me the Duchess and Van Loon shrieked 
“Mamas” into my ears, until I awoke in a cold sweat 
of terror. 

RosEncartEN—|[Chaffing.| While you were being 
scalped I suppose you felt that little sixth sense glow 
on the top of your head, like the Duchess—eh, Isaac? 

KovcrtmMan—[With comic seriousness.) You'll 
laugh; it was suggestion, of course, but the top of my 
head did burn for several hours afterwards. [T'owches 
top of head. | 

[Enter Capman, followed by three newspaper 
reporters. | 

Capman—|[Introducing reporters.| Gentlemen, this 
is Mr. Rosengarten and Mr. Kougelman, who will give 
you the notes you desire for the ball. [They all shake 
hands. CapMan retires. | 

First Rerorter—We all of course know Mr. Rosen- 
garten and Mr. Kougelman. 

RosENGARTEN—Mr. Packer has asked us to give you 
any information you desire. 

First Reporrer—It’s very kind of you and Mr. 
Kougelman to give us a few moments of your precious 
time. [After the traditional performance of throat- 
clearing.| Now,:Mr. Rosengarten, we hear there is to 
be a Mamas ballet danced by the most exclusive mem- 
bers of the younger set. Just what is the significance 
of this dance? 

RosENGARTEN—[Waving them into chairs.| Be 

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seated, gentlemen—be seated. [They all seat them- 
selves.| Well, as you have probably heard, the ballet 
is composed of twelve dancers, six gentlemen and six 
ladies, and is divided into six parts. 
Seconp Reporter—|[T aking out notebook.| Rep- 
resenting, as I understand, the senses? 
RosENGARTEN—Yes, the five objective senses, which, 
fused together, make the subjective sixth, or Mamas. 
Tuirp Reporter — [Taking shorthand  notes.| 
Hindoo word, isn’t it, Mr. Rosengarten? 
RosENGARTEN—Quite so. 
KovucrtmMan—|Parroting.| It means, you see, “the 
dual force generated by the attuned union of the two 
sexes within each individual.” 
First Reporter—[T aking it down.| ‘Attuned 
union of the two sexes.” Yes, an ethereal conception. 
RosENGARTEN—FEach couple will represent one of 
the five senses, and by rhythmic amalgamation and 
dynamic polarization in choregraphics they will mag- 
netically weld the disparate elements and generate the 
subliminal sixth, after having passed beyond trans- 
marginal consciousness by means of rotascopic multi- 
plication of movement and geometrical postulates of 
motion.—[ With blasé felinity.| You follow me? 
First Revorrer—[ With unctuous earnestness.| 
Perfectly! Your description is wonderfully lucid, Mr. 
Rosengarten. 
Tuirp Rerorrer—lI never quite understood what 
‘‘“Mamas”’ meant before, but now, of course 
Seconp Rerporrer—lIt’s perfectly simple after 
you’ve grasped it. [All continue to take notes. | 
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KoucetmMan—The Duchess of Mandelieu and Mr. 
Van Loon will represent the sixth sense. 

First Reporter—| With true democratic snobbish- 
ness.| How proud we should be to claim the Duchess 
of Mandelieu as our compatriot. 

Seconp Rerorter—Her Memoirs of the Great War 
is certainly an astounding achievement. 

KovuceLmMan—|Pompously.| History will see her 
as greater than Madame de Staél! 

First Reporrer—And the Duchess is to represent 
the sixth sense, Mr. Rosengarten? 

RosENGARTEN—Yes. She and Mr. Van Loon will 
together emerge from a silver egg, representing the 
Subliminal Self, after the dancers have passed with 
Dionysian demonstration of the sixth logarithm of 
seven places of decimals into pure concepts of Apol- 
lonian symbolism. At this moment, Mervyn, the Mas- 
ter ‘““Mamasist,” will appear, and later from the dais 
there [ pointing to the platform] will expound the cult 
of “Mamasism” in connection with his painting. 

Seconp Reportrer—lIt’s the sixth logarithm, isn’t 
it, Mr. Rosengarten? 

RosENGARTEN—Certainly; only the sixth could be 
possible, as applied to Mamasist dancing. My descrip- 
tion of the dance is pasigraphical, you understand. 

Tuirp Rrporter—Pas—i—graphical? 

RosENGARTEN—Yes; it was the celebrated Péano 
who first created this word to characterize his mathe- 
matical treatises, which he wrote without using a word 
of the usual language. 

Srconp Rrerortrer—Oh, I see! 

First Reporter—|[Witheringly, to the two other 

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reporters.| You’ve surely heard of Péano! Good- 
ness! | 

RosENGARTEN—As I’ve said before, I’ve merely 
made use of pasigraphy in my description of Mamasist 
dancing. 

First Reporter—But Marinetti 

RosENGARTEN—Marinetti’s idea is that by the 
fusion of man and machine he expresses the metalism 
of Futurist Art. 

First Reporter—aAnd may I ask, Mr. Rosengarten, 
how “‘Mamasism” essentially differs from Cubism and 
Futurism? 





RosENGARTEN—Ah, you see, Mamasism goes infi- 
nitely further in all branches of Art than Cubism, 
Futurism, and Dadaism, etc., for all those schools are 
limited to the purely materialistic expression of life, 
based on mechanics, whereas “Mamasism” is unlimited 
and founded upon the astronomical and higher mathe- 
matical conception of cosmic rhythm. 

SeconpD ReEporter—| With obvious  self-satisfac- 
tion.| Might I refer to Mamasism as Cosmo-rhyth- 
matical? 

RosENcGARTEN—|Casually.] Well, Astro-psychi- 
cosmo-rhyth-matical would be more correct. [Wink- 
ing to KoucEtMan. | 

Tuirp Rerorter—Just one word more about the 
dual sex, Mr. Kougelman. 

RosENcGARTEN—|[Looking at his watch.| Oh! I’m 
afraid it’s getting rather late. 

KovucretmMan—| Looking at his watch also.| Yes, 
and we still have a number of things to arrange. 

First ReporrEr—TI hope we haven’t abused your 
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kindness. [Shaking hands with RosENcarTEN, and 
then with Kovcrtman.] You have given us a most 
brilliant and enlightening interview. 

Second Reporter—lIt will be a real pleasure to 
write up such a concise and masterful exposition of 
modern Art. 

Tuirp Rreporrer—You’ve made it all as clear as 
day. 

RosENGARTEN—It’s always most agreeable to ex- 
press one’s views to such sympathetic and intelligent 
listeners. 

KovucELMAN AnD RosENGARTEN—Good night, gen- 
tlemen ! 

Reporters—Good night! 

[Exeunt Rerorters. | 

KovuceLmMan—|[Sinking into chair and holding his 
head.| Good God! it’s all beyond belief. And to think 
the articles of those blithering idiots will be solemnly 
swallowed to-morrow by herds of credulous fools! 

RosENcARTEN—It’s the eternal repetition. Old 
humanity never changes fundamentally. In the past 
it was Priest-ridden, to-day it is Press-ridden, but 
ridden it will always be. The spirit of the Gothic 
cathedral of old has passed into the newspaper build- 
ing of to-day. The priests are the reporters, and the 
confessional is the interview. ‘The newspaper proprie- 
tors have replaced Bishops and Cardinals, and our 
Republics use the Press as Autocracies used the 
Church, to manceuvre the mutton-headed mass into sub- 
jection. The Church threatened them with Hell and 
flattered them with promises of Immortality. The 
Press lashes them with ridicule and scandal, and flat- 

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ters them with notoriety, which they mistake for fame. 

KoucELMaAn—Well, that’s going some, to see the 
Press as a religious institution! 

RosENcGARTEN—But when you come to think of it, 
isn’t the newspaper the modern Bible? When science 
began to shake the people’s faith in Immortality, which 
is, after all, entirely based on vanity and a sense of 
self-importance, the mob tried in every way to immor- 
talize itself on earth, and as the Press gave it the pos- 
sibility of self-advertisement, the newspaper became the 
shrine. 

KoucetmMan—Well, we’ve certainly had enough ad- 
vertisement to make us immortal! ‘To-day there were 
over two hundred and fifty letters for Mervyn from 
idiotic women, many with nude photographs, offering 
themselves as wives, models, and concubines. We could 
start a shop with all the flowers, bon-bons and truck- 
muck he receives daily. At this rate, we’ll have to get 
a third secretary to answer all this rot. 

RosEncARTEN—|Cheerfully.| Splendid! 

KovcrtmMan—The whole thing is incredible—pre- 
posterous! I tell you, one has to be pretty well bal- 
anced to stand it. [Apprehensively.| I can’t help 
feeling there’s going to be an awful disaster. This 
can’t keep up indefinitely. 

RosENGARTEN—At first, my poor Isaac, you were 
afraid of failure, now you’re afraid of success. 

KovcrtmMan—Success! But this has gotten to be 
madness! [Pulling evening newspapers out of his 
pocket.| Look at this! Have you seen the evening 
newspapers? ‘There are columns and columns. Here’s 
an entire page, with enormous head-lines: ‘The Spread- 
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ing Cult of Mamasism.” ‘Mervyn, the Apostle of 
Mamas.” And pictures of him, and the Duchess, Miss 
Packer, and all of them! 

RosENGARTEN—Well? 

KovucetMan—Well; all I can tell you is that it is 
going too far! I can’t see why you don’t realize it! 
I haven’t slept for a week. There will be a terrible 
smash. [Showing another paper.| Look at all this 
about a young painter who has committed suicide after 
futile efforts to experience Mamas. And here’s the Rev. 
Percy Pant giving a Mamas tea-party in his vestry 
rooms to all New York society. [Turning over another 
page of the paper.| And, damn it, man, read this: 
*“*A husband, for calling ‘Mamas’ ‘poppycock,’ is almost 
beaten to death by his wife and daughter. They then 
both decamp with the wife’s lover, who had converted 
them to ‘Mamasism.’ ” 

RosENGARTEN—But what of it? When the last great 
prize-fight took place it wasn’t a question of columns, 
it was the entire newspaper; and for weeks there was 
as much about these two gladiators as when twenty 
millions of men were fighting to the death on battle- 
fields! There were cable dispatches; wireless reports 
of every blow; aeroplanes delivering cinema records of 
the fight; photographs of the pugilists from childhood, 
with their families, trainers, and all their court; trea- 
tises by scientists and philosophers; hysterical inter- 
views by famous writers; and men who were controlling 
the world’s destinies found time to compare these two 
sluggers to Phebus Apollo, Bonaparte, Charles the 
Twelfth, and heaven knows who else! No!—with all 

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modesty, I think we might be allowed a page for Art 
occasionally. 
[Enter Mrs. Packer in full Mamas regalia. 
She is dressed, or rather undressed, with a skirt 
cut just below her knees, revealing elephantine legs 
in flesh-pink stockings. Her bodice is décolleté to 
the extent of causing serious apprehension, and is 
slashed open in the back to the waist-line, showing 
rolls of quivering fat, separated by a gulch-like 
slit from shoulder blade to middle. On her head is 
a golden Mamas helmet with large diamond wings. 
She is painted, powdered, perfumed, bespangled, 
bangled, dangled, jangled, twinkling, winkling, 
blinkling, sparkling, glittering, shimmering with 
paillettes and jewels. Miss Packer follows, wear- 
ing a Mamas domino over a fantastic ballet cos- 
twme. | 

Mrs. Packer—|[Very agitated.| Oh, Mr. Rosen- 
garten, won’t you and Mr. Kougelman please tell Mr. 
Packer that my dress is all right? He says it’s much 
too short, and even indecent! Fancy my looking in- 
decent! And I’ve been trying so hard for weeks to 
have this ball a success. I now see it’s just going to be 
a failure. 

RosENGARTEN—But, Mrs. Packer, I think your 
dress is lovely! Perfectly lovely! 

KoucELMAn—And most artistic! 

Miss Packer—I told you, mother, your dress was 
all right, but I’m not so sure about your dance with 
Mr. Cadman. 

Mrs. Pacxer—|[ With disappointed surprise.]| You 
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mean to say you don’t think I should do my Relativity 
Dance, which I have worked all these weeks over? 

Miss Packer—I’m afraid Papa won’t approve of it. 
He seems so irritable and nervous to-night. 

Mrs. Packrer—But, Patricia, it was to be a surprise 
to your father! and the dancing-master, Signor Mura- 
tori, told me yesterday, at our last rehearsal, that it 
was simply grand, and that I was as light and airy as 
a fairy. He seemed enchanted, and even declared I was 
one of his best pupils. 

Miss Pacxer—Well, mother, I think he might at 
least say that, as he asks a hundred dollars a lesson. 

Mrs. Packer—But what of it? Isn’t he the great- 
est dancing-master in the world? [Catching sight of 
CADMAN in evening dress passing in conservatory. | 
Oh, Mr. Cadman, we must have a dress rehearsal of our 
dance. But where’s your domino? And tell the or- 
chestra to start up our piece. 

Capman—|[From conservatory.| All right, Mrs. 
Packer. [Disappears a moment. | 

Mrs. Pacxer—You’ve no idea, Mr. Rosengarten, 
how carefully I’ve studied every page of Einstein’s book 
on Relativity, to be able to interpret his ideas in my 
dance. 

RosENGARTEN—It will be wonderful, I’m sure, and 
I’m longing to see you elucidate his celebrated passage 
that “Mass is variable with the condition and velocity 
of the observer.” 

Mrs. Pacxer—That’s it! That’s it! Mr. Cadman 
and I are the mass, and you are the velocity of the 


observer. 
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RosencarteN—If Einstein could only see it, Mrs. 
Packer! 

Mrs. Pacxer—Yes, I’m sure he’d love it. And then 
you see, I thought it would please the Duchess, who 
owns Mervyn’s greatest masterpiece, Einstein’s Rela- 
tivity. 

RosENGARTEN AND KoucetmMan—T[In one breath.] 
What a masterpiece! 

Miss Pacxer—lI only wish father had bought it. 

RosENGARTEN—But, Miss Packer, your father has 
twenty beautiful Mervyns. 

KoucretmMan—| Aside.| And twenty more are wait- 
ing for him. [Re-enter CapMan in domino and head- 
dress. He casts a sheepish look at Miss Packer. | 

Mrs. Packer—|Briskly.| Now, Mr. Cadman, we'll 
just go through it. 

CapmMan—|[Apprehensively.| I hope Mr. Packer is 
not going to object. 

Mrs. Packer—[Buoyantly.| Object! What an 
idea! We’ll have a tremendous success. [Makes sign 
to orchestra leader in conservatory to begin.| You 
can just start the music. [The orchestra plays one of 
the very latest and most exquisite compositions by one 
of the “Great Six.” The dancers face each other a 
few yards apart, then slowly advance, making gro- 
tesque and angular movements. Mrs. Pacxer places 
her hands on Capman’s shoulders, and they revolve 
around together, swaying and rocking back and forth.| 

KoucELMan—|[Aside to Rosencarten.| Do you 
see it too, or am I going mad? 

Miss Packrr—|[Rather ashamed. Apologetically. | 
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You know, mother has been so insistent about this 
dance, but I’m sure father won’t approve of it at all. 

RosEncartTEN—|[Repressing a smile.| Muratori is 
certainly a very clever professor of dancing, but per- 
haps this will be over the heads of most people. 

[The dancers, now back to back, begin to bump 
each other’s posteriors with increasing vigour, 
waving their arms like windmills, and rolling their 
heads around. Finally, after tiptoeimg, gliding, 
and skipping about, while simulating, with inane 
gestures, fear, grtef, mirth, etc., they entwine 
themselves in a long pink ribbon which CapMan 
withdraws from his pocket. They remain face to 
face with arms uplifted and hands quivering. Mrs. 
Packer gazes with silly ecstasy into the eyes of 
her partner, who with a foolish self-conscious look 
returns her gaze. | 

Pacxer—|[ Who has been watching the last few min- 
utes of the dance unobserved by all, now suddenly en- 
ters from conservatory, looking shocked and angry. | 
Well, that’s a pretty sight! What the devil do you 
think you’re doing anyhow? And you, Cadman, do you 
take yourself for a maypole, or a quivering aspen leaf? 

Mrs. Pacxer—[In breathless agitation, unwinding 
herself from ribbon.| Why, Ezra, this was to be a 
surprise for you! I didn’t mean 

[RosENGARTEN makes sign to KoucELMan, and 
they withdraw to conservatory with Semitic tact.] 

Pacxrr—A lovely surprise, to see you quivering and 
shaking there like a jelly! 

CapMan—|[Confused and embarrassed.| Im sorry 
you’re displeased, Mr. Packer, but—er 








219 


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Pacxer—|[Ignoring him.| Patricia, ’'m astonished 
to see you encouraging your mother to make such a 
consummate old goose of herself! 

Miss Pacxer—lI told mother that you 

Mrs. Packrr—T[Incensed.| Old goose of myself! 
Why, I’ve been studying that dance for weeks with 
Signor Muratori, and just because you’re incapable of 
understanding Einstein’s Relativity, it’s not my fault. 

Packer—| With uproarious irony.| Ha, ha! Ein- 
stein’s Relativity! Suffering Jehoshaphat! So that’s 
what you call your rockin’ and rollin’ and wallopin’ 
about like an old sea-lion! And you meant to do that 
before our guests? 

Mrs. PackEr—You ought to be ashamed to talk to 
your wife like that, after all the trouble I’ve taken 
about this ball. A lot of help you’ve been! You first 
refuse to wear your helmet, and then say my dress, 
which cost two thousand dollars, is indecent. 

Pacxer—For that price, they should have given you 
more of it. 

Mrs. Pacxer—|Fwurious.| And here you are now, 
spoiling my dance and the whole evening. I simply feel 
like going to bed, and leaving you to do the whole 
thing! : 

Miss Packer—[Looking round anxiously.| Oh, 
mother, don’t get excited! The guests will be arriving 
any minute. 

PacxEer—I would rather have you stay in bed than 
have you make such an exhibition of yourself. 

Miss Packer—[Stamping her foot authoritatively. | 
Now, father, do be quiet! You’ve said enough! 

Mrs. Packer—[Ewaploding.| Your father is just a 
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great big—big—big—heathen, and now I know he 
doesn’t believe in Mamasism, or Art, or anything else! 

Miss Pacxer—[Imploringly.| Please, mother, 
please! Goodness! Here’s the Duchess! 

[DucueEss enters gaily, accompanied by Van 
Loon. Both are wearing mauve dominos over 
their ballet costumes. Van RENssELAER-LEVINE- 
son, KoucetMan and RosencartEN follow. They 
are robed in violet silk, and wear Mamas helmets 
similar to that of PacxeEr. | 

DucueEss—Well, here we all are, for the greatest Art 
event of the century. But what’s the matter with Mrs. 
Packer? 

Mrs. Pacxer—|[T'rying to compose herself.| Oh, 
nothing, nothing! Mr. Packer has been going for me 
about my dress. 

Ducuess—|Endeavouring to conceal mirth.| Your 
dress? Why, it’s too beautiful! Isn’t it beautiful, Van 
Rensselaer? It’s Brunhilda! You’re Brunhilda, Mrs. 
Packer. 

Levinrson—Superlative! [Aside.] Grotesque! 

Mrs. Pacxer—[ Playing martyr.| Mr. Packer says 
it’s much too low and too short, and that I look like 
Mother Goose in it. 

Ducurss—|[ Shaking finger at Mr. Packer bewittch- 
ingly.| Oh, Mr. Packer, you naughty man! 

Mrs. Pacxer—And he refuses to wear his helmet, 
Duchess. 

Ducurss—Where is it? We'll just put it on his 
head right away. 

Miss Pacxer—[ Handing helmet to Ducuerss.| Here 
it is, Gloria. He won’t dare to refuse you! 

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Ducurss—See, Mr. Packer, how knightly Van 
Rensselaer and Normie are in theirs, and you’ll out- 
shine them completely. [Puts helmet on his head, with 
exaggerated admiration.| Ah! now look at him! Isn’t 
he superb, magnificent? Behold Ulysses! Sir Gala- 
had! Siegfried! 

Pacxer—[Succumbing to flattery.| Ah, Duchess, 
you’re a dangerous woman—a real Circe. [Kissing her 
hand gallantly. | 

Ducuess—Hear that! You must teach Van Rens- 
selaer how to make compliments. [Gazing around 
room.| But how lovely the room looks! Oh! you’ve 
moved the Indians and the Virgin; they are much better 
there, Mr. Packer. Now, aren’t you glad you bought 
them? And the Mervyns are beautifully placed. I 
recognize Mr. Rosengarten’s hand. 

RosencarteEN—Yes, I think everything looks very 
well for the ball, Duchess. But Mr. and Mrs. Packer 
have such understanding. 

KouceLtmMan—We soon hope to see Mr. Packer with 
the finest private collection in the world. 

Pacxer—It’s on the way 

KovuceLtMan—|[Aside.] May God and the Kougel- 
mans speed it! 

Ducurss—I’m so excited about our ballet! They 
ought to be here by now. Wait until you see Normie’s 
costume! It’s too marvellous! Now show yourself off, 





Normie. 

Van Loon—[Opening his domino coyly.| Well, Pll 
just let you have a peep. 

Evrerysopy—Oh, how beautiful! lovely! marvellous! 
exquisite ! 
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Mrs. Packer—[Agitated.| Oh, Ezra, they’re ar- 
riving! Come quickly! Come, Patricia! 

Miss Pacxer—[Impatiently.| In a moment, 
mother! 

[Mr. and Mrs. Packer take up position near 
door to receive guests, who begin to arrive. The 
gentlemen wear regulation Mamas helmets and 
robes over evening dress. The ladies, in varied 
Mamas costumes, are resplendent and phantasttc. 
The conceptions of some of the older ones are ex- 
tremely risible and verge on the grotesque. The 
guests form little groups and interchange saluta- 
tions. Orchestra plays. Numerous lackeys in 
knee-breeches, white stockings, and powdered hair 
are seen lined up in conservatory. Others pass to 
and fro. Capman flits back and forth among 
guests with an eye to everything. | 

Ducuess—You wouldn’t believe how proud he is of 
his legs. And to think he’s been hiding them from us 
for all these years! Look how jealous Van Rensselaer 
is! I’m sure he hasn’t legs like that, or he wouldn’t 
have refused to dance in the ballet. 

Lrevineson—[Piqued.| Someone must be audience, 
you know. 

Ducuess—Imagine Van Rensselaer as_ audience, 
when he never listens to anyone but himself. 

Miss Packer—But then we’re all so glad to listen to 
him, Gloria. 

Lrvineson—Thank you, Miss Packer, for putting 
in a good word for me, as I rarely get a chance to put 
in a word for myself. 

Ducuess—Hear that! Isn’t he rude? You might 
suppose I did all the talking. Mr. Rosengarten, is 

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everything ready? ‘There mustn’t be a hitch, you know. 
I’m so afraid Normie will pop out of our subliminal 
silver egg too soon. He’s become so vain, you know— 
so impossibly vain! 

Van Loon—Oh, Gloria, the idea of being alone with 
you in the silver egg of subconsciousness will be so 
enchanting that I may never become conscious again! 

Ducuerss—Does that mean he may forget himself? 
Oh, how awfully exciting! Think of Normie forgetting 
himself! Has Mervyn come yet? It would be just like 
him to forget all about the ball, and not turn up at all. 
He’s such a genius! 

RosENcGARTEN—I’ve already foreseen that possibil- 
ity, Duchess. Mr. Kougelman has just left to fetch 
him. His entrance in his white robes will be most ef- 
fective. 

Miss Pacxer—Oh, I’m sure it will be perfectly mar- 
vellous, but I do wish he had deigned to come to the 
rehearsals. 

Ducuess—But, Patricia, you mustn’t ever expect 
geniuses to rehearse. Geniuses never rehearse, you 
know. 

RosENGARTEN—Don’t worry, Miss Packer. He'll 
know his part. I’ve explained it most carefully. [T'wo 
ladies and several gentlemen approach who are to dance 
in the ballet. Miss Packer joins her parents. | 

DucurEss—Oh, but here’s some of the ballet. Good 
evening! Good evening! Where are the others? 

DesutTantE—|Shuffling across the room, with a 
jazz wiggle. To Ducurss in a drawling sing-song 
voice.| E-v-e-n-1-n-g! 

Rartroap Presipent—|[On the other side of room, 
224 


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joining friend.| Well, Tom, you certainly look like a 
bird ! 

SportsmMAN—Birds of a feather, you know. 

Rartroap Presipent—|[Self-consciously adjusting 
his helmet.| My missis put this swan on my head. 

SPORTSMAN—Same here! 

Jupcre—|Joining group.| Last winter, Dick, we 
were Blue Birds, and this winter I see we are “Mamas” 
birds. 

Rartroap Presment—Who knows what kind of 
birds we'll be next winter! 

SportsmMan—| Nodding in the direction of a fat, 
flabby, effeminate-looking, middle-aged man with flac- 
cid jowls.| There’s the Editor of that tom-fool asinine 
journal, Woman’s Supremacy. The big fat stiff! Dd 
like to punch his face, damn him! 

JupceE—|[Laughing.| It is a temptation. You 
know he now actually calls himself ‘Susan Timkins.” 

Rartroap PresipeENtT—You mean he signs his ar- 
ticles “Susan”? 

JupcE—Not a bit of it! He claims it’s barbaric 
to have sex differentiated by Christian names, and in- 
sists on being called “Susan.” 

SportsMaAN—Gawd, it’s idiotic! But, after all, I 
don’t see much difference. My spouse, who’s a high- 
brow, God bless her, calls herself, as you all know, 
“Patrick Odd.” It’s all right for—er—a—er—what 
do you call—em—nom de plume for her books, but 
now, by golly, everyone has to call her “Patrick”! 

JupcE—It’s certainly a topsy-turvy epoch. Lately 
my wife has taken to calling herself by her maiden 
name. You can imagine how that looks on hotel reg- 

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isters. “Judge Hackett and Miss Nora Ibsen.” 
[ Laughter. ] 

SportsMAN—[T'o SENATOR, joining group.| Hi, 
Senator! you look like the Imperial Wizard of the Ku 
Klux. 

Srnator—| Rather shame-faced.| My missis togged 
me out like this. 

SportsmMan—Well, you’re darned lucky if she 
stopped with the helmet. My Frau landed me with four 
of those Mervyn daubs, this afternoon! 

Jupce—| With a gnostic patronizing smile.| I con- 
gratulate you. Those Mervyns are wonderful works 
of art. My wife bought two at the opening of the 
Exhibition, and Van Rensselaer-Levineson, who is a 
great friend of ours, says she picked out two of the 
best. 

Srortsman—Seems to me a hell of a price for pic- 
tures of that size—ten thousand dollars or more! Why, 
it’s more than you would have to cough up for a 
cracker-jack polo pony! 

JupcE—| With wise judicial smile.| They will prob- 
ably be worth more than a good many polo ponies 
some day. 

SeENATOR—Well, one’s my limit. I hear Packer’s 
cornered the market on ’em. 

Rarroap Presipent—I haven’t been to the show 
yet, but I meant to go with my wife and Van Rensselaer- 
Levineson this afternoon. 

Sznator—All I can say is that I’ve been taken there 
three times by my “better half,”’ but I’m none the wiser. 
She says there’s no hope for me. [Laughter.| Judge, 
what’s your idea about all this Mamas Art business? 
226 


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Jupcre—|[Flattered to be appealed to as Art con- 
noisseur.| It’s a bit difficult to express in a few words, 
Senator, but Mervyn, who is the originator of it, is, to 
my mind, one of the most creative and constructive Art 
geniuses of the epoch. 

Doucuess—|[F rom other side of gallery, is centre of 
an animated group.| Oh, goodness, don’t say anything 
against Freud before Normie Van Loon! Freud is his 
household god; isn’t he, Normie? Aren’t you a wor- 
shipper of Freud? 

Van Loon—Now, Gloria! 

Ducuess—Even during the war he kept an enormous 
picture of him on his mantelpiece, and he psycho- 
analyses himself every morning; don’t you, Normie? 

Van Loon—Gracious, Gloria, you'll have everyone 
thinking I’m a Bosch! [Laughter.] But how about 
your prophet, Karl Marx? The Duchess is a red So- 
cialist, you know—in fact a real Communist. 

A GENnTLEMAN—I wish you would tell us, Duchess, 
about your experiences in Russia. 

Ducurss—Oh, you'll see it all in The New Republic. 
I’m writing for them, you know, in defence of Bolshe- 
vism. 

DezsutTantE—But didn’t you nearly pass out when 
you met Lenin and Trotsky? 

Ducurss—Oh, what an idea! Lenin is the most 
charming man. And such a genius! And as for Trot- 
sky, he’s really too marvellous. He’s our Napoleon of 
peace! 

DersuTanTE—lI’ll bet he’s a corker all right. 

Ducuerss—Of course they always called me “com- 
rade.” But one night—it was awfully funny—they 
were giving a banquet in the Kremlin, and the food was 


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perfectly delicious—delicious—which sounds incredible, 
as the country was starving to death. I shall never 
forget it! Poor Trotsky forgot himself and called me 
“Duchess” before everyone, and darling Lenin nearly 
fainted with rage. [All laugh. | 

Van Loon—How humorous! How impossibly hu- 
morous ! 

DesuTaNTE—|[Giggling.| Gee! that’s going some 
for a Red. He must have been gloriously soused. 
[ Laughter. | 

RosENGARTEN—|[Coming up.| Excuse me, Duchess, 
but it’s time for the ballet. 

-Ducuess—Come, Normie! Call everybody. 

[Eait Ducuess, followed by other members of 
the ballet. In centre of gallery LevinxEson is being 
lionized by a group of admiring ladies. | 

Patrick Opp—But, Mr. Van Rensselaer-Levineson, 
wasn’t the Pope awfully upset when you told him his 
pet Botticelli wasn’t genuine? 

Lrvinrson—Oh, yes; but he was consoled later when 
I discovered that two exquisite little paintings of doubt- 
ful origin were by Piero di Cosimo. 

Patrick Opp—How clever! 

Levineson—|[ With a mental yawn.| It must be an 
awful bore to be of doubtful origin. 

A Lapy—You know I’ve just finished your marvel- 
lous book on Mervyn. Don’t forget you promised to 
write in it. 

Miss Nora Insen—I was simply thrilled by it, too! 
Your book on the Indians is my favourite, though. 

A Lapy—Do you think so? Mine is his Fra An- 
gelico book: that’s too divine. 

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Lrevineson—wWell, on the whole, I’d rather make 
books than babies. [ Laughter. | 

A Lavy—How refreshingly shocking! Now, dear 
Mr. Van Rensselaer-Levineson, when are you going to 
take me to the Exhibition? I’m afraid all the pictures 
will be gone before I’m able to get one. 

Lrvineson—|[Suppressing a yawn.| Any afternoon, 
dear lady! 

Patrick Opp—I’m perfectly enchanted with the four 
you selected with me yesterday; they are really jewels. 
My husband, of course, doesn’t understand them, al- 
though he’d like to, poor dear. 

Lrevineson—He will! He will! We must give the 
poor dear time, you know, Patrick. [ Laughter. | 

A Lapy—lI’ve tried to explain to my husband about 
Mamasism, and get him off the eternal subject of the 
Stock Market, but it’s no use. 

Patrick Opp—Our American men are really such 
barbarians when it comes to Art. 

Lrvineson—Oh! aren’t you rather severe? Tve met 
a fairly civilized one occasionally. [ Laughter. | 

Miss Nora Issen—Oh, you’re too delicious ! 

Patrick Opp—You do make me laugh! 

A Lapvy—Oh! by the way, won’t you all come to 
luncheon to-morrow? The Spanish Ambassador and 
one of his secretaries are coming, and we'll have a civ- 
ilized conversation for a change. 

Miss Nora Issen—No husbands allowed! They’re 
bad enough in winter, but odious in spring. 

Lrevineson—The springtime is an ominous moment 
for them, Miss Ibsen. 

Patrick Opp—Why the springtime, particularly? 

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Lrvingeson—Don’t you know? 


‘The Cuckoo then, on every tree, 
Mocks married men; for thus sings he, 
Cuckoo, Cuckoo !—Oh, word of fear! 
Unpleasing to a married ear!” 


A Lapvy—[Delighted.| Oh, what a naughty little 
verse! Is it yours? 

Levinrson—Thank you, dear lady. You’re all so 
delightfully and refreshingly ignorant. I was merely 
quoting Shakespeare. 

A Lapy—I[Disconcerted.| Of course, how dull of 
us! It’s in his sonnets. Tl expect you all, then! 

Levineson—Yes! What fun! I haven’t met the 
Ambassador, but the King of Spain is a dear friend 
of mine. 

A Lapy—[ Pointedly.| And of course I’ll ask the 
Duchess of Mandelieu too. 

Lrevineson—But don’t drag in old Van Loon, he’s 
such a bore. 

[The orchestra abruptly stops playing soft 
waltz music and the ballet is heralded by the 
rolling of drums and bugle calls. The guests 
seat themselves amid murmurs of anticipation. 
Throughout the ballet there are bursts of ap- 
plause and exclamations of appreciation. Lights 
are lowered and bluish spot-lights are thrown on 
the first couple, representing SENsE oF TovucH, 
who appear in the large doorway right. 

Both are phantastically dressed, wearing silver 
skull-caps, from which project long antenne. The 
man wears purple tights. A tuft of black and 

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white feathers, resembling a cock’s tail, is held in 
place by a jewelled belt. On his feet are long 
pointed cerise shoes. In his ears are emeralds, 
with which his hands are also covered. The 
woman is dressed in mauve and green. Her skirt 
is short, her bodice extremely low, her legs are 
bare, and on her feet are black velvet slippers with 
green heels. She is covered with jewels. They 
pirouette about, seeking to touch each other 
lightly with finger-tips and antenne. 

The second couple, representing SENSE OF 
Taste, follow. The man wears yellow tights 
spotted with black and is girdled with orange 
feathers. She is dressed in yellow, orange and 
gold, and carries a long slender golden pitcher, 
from which she affects to pour wine into her part- 
ner’s golden goblet. Both are wreathed in autumn 
leaves and grapes. 

The third couple, representing SENSE OF SIGHT, 
are arrayed in green and blue and crowned with 
peacock feather eyes on slender stems. The man 
has a spreading tail of peacock feathers. Her tail 
is furled and sweeps the ground. Her breasts are 
covered with metal disks, inlaid with emeralds and 
sapphires. They both appear with black band- 
ages over their eyes, and after groping about, 
finally meet, untie each other’s bandages, and then 
cavort about in delight. 

The fourth pair, wreathed in flowers and sym- 
bolizing SENSE oF SMELL, are dressed in pinks and 
mauwves, with pale green stockings. They carry 
large exotic flowers in their hands and swoon in 

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ecstasy while inhaling the perfume _ therefrom. 
They terminate their round in a dance of sensuous 
joy. 

The fifth couple, representing S—ensE or HEar- 
ING, are dressed in blue and mauve. On their 
wrists and ankles are little tinkling silver bells, and 
on their heads are swung half hoops of bells. The 
man blows a few notes on a long silver reed-like 
flute. The woman listens with her hand to her ear 
and flutters to him, shaking her bells, after which 
they twirl about together. 

When a couple has executed their figure they 
stand to one side while the following couple 
dances. After the five couples have made their en- 
trance they all tiptoe together to the back of the 
room, and from behind a violet curtain, which has 
been drawn across the entrance during the dance, 
they pull forward, by silver chains, an enormous 
“Mamas” bird, mounted on small golden wheels, 
carrying on its back a great silver egg. 

The couples form a circle and dance about the 
egg. Each dancer then grasps a silver ribbon 
which is attached to the top of the egg, and as 
they pull simultaneously the upper part of the egg 
falls apart in ten sections, revealing Van Loon 
and the Ducuess entwined together under a mass 
of white feathers and shimmering silver veils. The 
dancers prostrate themselves around the egg, while 
the DucueEss and Van Loon slowly, and languidly, 
come to life and emerge from it together. 

They are both exquisitely dressed in silver span- 





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gles and diamonds, with crests of white plumes on 
their heads. 

Van Loon’s neck is bare. His arms are covered 
with long white kid gloves. He wears garters, 
bracelets, and earrings of diamonds, and his white 
tail feathers trail behind him on the ground like a 
pheasant. The Ducuess wears a silver-spangled 
robe. A long court train m silver cloth, embroi- 
dered with a Mamas bird, hangs from her shoul- 
ders. Her high-heeled slippers sparkle with dia- 
monds. Their costumes are colourless save for 
two vermilion triangles over their hearts. 

They step out of the egg, exchange cabalistic 
signs, assume Mamasist poses, and then touch with 
their wands the heads of the prostrate dancers, 
causing each dancer to rise in turn. The gentle- 
men now form a line to right, the ladies to left, 
between which the Ducuess and Van Loon walk 
majestically to the great doorway and again draw 
the curtains aside, revealing Mervyn, who appears 
like a prophet, robed in simple white draperies. 
_ His neck is bare and on his feet are sandals. His 
head is wreathed with white jasmine. 

The limelight is thrown on Mervyn alone. He 
remains immovable for a few seconds and then 
slowly advances through the two lines of dancers. 
RosENGARTEN at this moment steps forward and 
conducts him to one of the four great gold chairs 
reserved for him between Mrs. Packer and the 
Mayor or New York. 

As soon as MERvyYN 1s seated, PackER steps to 
platform and opens the ceremonies. He clears his 


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throat, with the self-assurance of a master of in- 
dustry, glances about the room and, with impres- 
stve voice, begins: * 


Packer: Lapres anD GENTLEMEN,—We have with 
us this evening a most honoured guest who needs no 
introduction, for his glorious record of self-sacrifice, 
altruistic endeavour, charitable effort and exalted re- 
gard for justice, truth and the public welfare is em- 
blazoned on the golden tablets of our city. I present 
to you an ardent patriot, an upholder of civilization, 


1Qn re-reading the above suggestions for the ballet, I find 
them not only ludicrously old-fashioned and out of date, but 
reactionary to the last degree. In them there are no tooting 
taxi horns, jingling telephone bells, siren factory whistles, scrap- 
ing metallic gramophones, roaring aeroplanes, automatic riveters 
and other inspiriting symphonies of the grinding, crashing ma- 
chinery so dear to the modern progressive democratic ear. 

The dancers, too, are unmechanized and do not endeavour to 
simulate motor cars and aeroplanes and coast about on their 
stomachs, or slide around on their posteriors as they did in the 
Dadaist ballet which was recently given in Paris by world-famous 
magazine and newspaper artists to a world-famous magazine and 
newspaper public. 

As I feel, therefore, the possibilities of this Mamasist ballet 
entirely surpass my imagination, I suggest having it staged and 
carried out by super-modern masters of super-modern art. Eric 
Sati, Ford and Crane (the world-famous plumber) might com- 
pose the ballet music, assisted by the “Great Six.” Stravinsky, 
H. G. Wells (the noble labourite), Loyal Painless Thompson and 
Babe Ruth might conduct the orchestra. The costumes could be 
designed by selected members of the Saloon of French Inde- 
pendents, and the management and general decoration could be 
undertaken by Bellock Stardale and the Committee of American 
Artists who organized the Armoury Art Circus of 1912, with a 
crashing brass band, newspaper ring-masters, “arty” clowns, con- 
tortionist critics, floor-walking art boosters and pathological side- 
shows of “ists” and “isms.” 


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progress* and true democracy—His Honour the 
Mayor of New York! [Loud applause. Pacxerr bows 
to the Mayor and with a gesture invites him to mount 
the platform from which he has descended. | 

Mayor—| Speaking from platform with all the gusto 
and sentimental fulsomeness of the successful political 
bell-wether.| Laprrs anD GENTLEMEN,—We are as- 
sembled here this evening in this superb and sumptuous 
palace to offer up our tribute to Art and do honour 
to a world-renowned genius who has brought to us, 
through his inspired vision, the sunlight of European 
thought and culture. It is by such higher understand- 
ing and spiritual sympathy, which constitute practical 
idealism, that countries become united in sacred and 
indissoluble bonds of love and friendship. Even as a 
child my dream was to become some day a servant of 
the people and a knight-errant of “Liberty, Equality 
and Fraternity,” those three radiant, triumphant sis- 
ters of holy democracy, in whose eyes blaze the divine 
light of altruism, humility, self-sacrifice, from whose 
lips drop pearls of wisdom, rubies of truth, glittering 
diamonds of eternal justice, and whose sainted brows 
are encircled by golden wreaths of progress. [Great 
applause. | 

RosENGARTEN—| Aside to Koucretman.] Before our 
Mayor became shepherd of New York he must have been 
a jeweller. 

1 Mr. Galton, the distinguished anthropologist, states: “It follows 
from all this that the average ability of the Athenian race is, 
on the lowest possible estimate, very nearly two grades higher 
than our own; that is, about as much as our race is above that 


of the African negro.” Ezra P., Henry Ford and Mayor Sweeny 
would undoubtedly consider this statement “rotten bunk.” 
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Mayor—[Swelling with self-umportance and flush- 
ing with gratified vanity, he addresses Mervyn his- 
trionically.| You, Mr. Mervyn, are also serving the 
people, and with your paint brush dipped in sunbeams 
give them the beauty for which their spirits hunger. 
Did not Christ say: “Man cannot live by bread alone’? 
Although my public duties are exacting and arduous, 
I nevertheless found time, or, rather, my wife and 
daughter, who are art lovers and among your most 
ardent admirers, found time for me to visit your unique 
exhibition at the Kougelman Galleries. It is owing to 
their feminine intuition and delicate perception that I 
am now more fully able to appreciate the subtle intri- 
cacies of Mamasist art, which has inspired in me a still 
deeper sense of service for the cause of right, which is 
the might of the plain people. Vox populi, vor Dei! 
For is not true art, in the words of one who was one 
hundred—nay, one thousand—per cent. American: 
“Of the people, for the people, and by the people’? 
[Cheers and prolonged applause. | 

Ducuess—Bravo, your Honour! Magnificent! 
Bravo, cousin! 

Van Loon—Hear, hear! 

Mayror—|[ Making a sign to Mrs. Packer, who steps 
forward and presents to him a red velvet cushion, on 
which is a small gold key.| Mr. Mervyn, I now have 
the honour to present to you the liberty of our great 
city of New York [Taking key from cushion], of which 
this little gold key is the symbol. I may add that you 
will have no ‘need of it to unlock our hearts or imagi- 
nations, which have already been unlocked by the vital 
beauty and luminous sanity of your masterpieces. 
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| Amid tremendous and sustained applause, he descends 
from the platform, and hands the key to Mervyn, who 
accepts tt with a profound bow. The Mayor seats him- 
self, while Mervyn, guided by RosENcARTEN, who has 
remained watchfully at his elbow, ascends platform in 
midst of expectant and awed hush. Lights are low- 
ered, and limelight is thrown on him. He stands im- 
passive, his eyes fixed on RoseNGARTEN, who, holding 
MeErvyn’s gaze, withdraws to a certain distance behind 
guests, where he remains standing. He then sympathet- 
ically and suggestively nods Mervyn into beginning his 
speech, which he does in a low monotonous voice, as if 

he were reciting a lesson under hypnotic control. | 
Mervyn: Frirenps,—The only possibility I have of 
expressing my overflow of gratitude to you, Mr. Mayor, 
for your most gracious speech, and for all the honours 
I have received since my arrival in this great and glori- 
ous country, is through my painting. If I am able to 
unlock with this little gold key another secret door 
leading into ever-deepening mysteries of Art, I shall 
not have received it in vain, although Art is but an 
approach to the impossible. In his earliest day-dreams 
the artist instinctively knows that he has chosen the 
steepest, most solitary, and most dangerous path—a 
path which differs from all others, in that it is without 
resting-place, guide or goal, and that his only com- 
pensation can be found in the pangs and joys of crea- 
tion. Other men may be judged by their ability and 
success in skilfully penetrating a difficult or an easy 
close, but the artist aims at an ever-receding goal, and 
if he be judged at all, it must be by his poetical effort 
of approach to the unattainable. A vital difference 
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between the painter and the artist is that the painter 
expresses what you have seen, while the artist creates 
what you have not seen. The painter intensifies your 
consciousness, the artist illuminates your subconcious- 
ness, your sixth sense, or “Mamas.” 'The Hindoo phi- 
losophers. . . . The Hindoo philosophers . . . philos- 
phers ... philoso... [He suddenly stops, puts 
both hands to his head, and cries out in a terrified 
voice.| I’ve forgotten it! I’ve forgotten the rest! 
[He stares wildly around room, and on seeing statue of 
Virgin implores her piteously, with outstretched arms. | 
Oh, Marie! Marie, help me! help me to remember it. 
And why do they call me Mervyn? My name is John 
Brown, and I’m not a genius, I’m a poor fool, a poor 
fool! [He then drops to his knees, and covering his 
face with his hands begins to sob violently. Kov- 
GELMAN, who has been standing near RosENGARTEN, 
breathlessly following Mrervyn’s speech, while mopping 
his brow in great agitation and trembling with nervous 
apprehension, suddenly collapses unnoticed into a 
chair. In the midst of the hubbub and general con- 
sternation he groans aloud. | 

KovcreLMan—We’re lost! I knew it would happen; 
I foresaw it all. We’re lost—lost! 

RosencarteENn—| Who has remained perfectly calm, 
looks quickly from Mervyn to Kovcrerman. He hesi- 
tates a moment, and then with a sudden flash of inspi- 
ration seizes KoucetmMan by the arm with a quick de- 
termined gesture.| Be quiet, you fool! Leave it to 
me. Get everyone out! Tell them he’s gone mad. 
Mad!—do you hear? It’s all right! Get up! Pull 
yourself together. [He shakes him violently by the arm 
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and jerks him to his feet. He then quickly walks to the 
platform, where MERvyN is surrounded by the PackErs, 
the Ducuerss, Van Loon and others, who are trying to 
console him. From platform, addressing guests.| It 
would be better for everyone to leave the room imme- 
diately. Mr. Mervyn must be left alone. The strain 
has been too great. It’s a mental breakdown. [T'o 
Mrs. Packer and the Ducnuess.| Don’t you see? He’s 
gone mad! Get them all out! Leave me alone with him. 
Be quick! 
[Room quickly empties amid exclamations: How 
awful! Terrible! What a tragedy! A calamity!] 

Ducuess—|Hastening everyone out.| He’s gone 
mad! Quick, quick, we must all leave! He must be left 
alone. How appalling! [Leading Mrs. Packer, who 
is dazed and weeping.| Poor Mrs. Packer, how awful 
for you! Our wonderful Mervyn! It’s incredible! 
Our genius gone mad! 

Mrs. Pacxer—lIt’s too dreadful!—too dreadful! 
Oh! I feel so faint. [She totters from room supported 
by Ducuerss, Van Loon and Mr. Packer. Kovcet- 
MAN and RosENGARTEN are left alone with MErRvyn, 
who has remained kneeling on platform. | 

RosENGARTEN—|[Patting Mervyn gently and ten- 
derly on head.| What’s the matter, dear boy? Don’t 
cry! It’s all right! Everything is all right! 

Mervyn—[Uncovering his face and with subsiding 
sobs.| You won’t scold me, then? You’re not angry? 

RosEncARTEN—|[ Helping him to his feet.] Scold 
you! Why, no, my dear child! You know I’m always 
kind to you. I never scold you. 

Mervyn—| Piteously.| ‘That’s why I hated to for- 

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get. I wanted to please you so much. I wanted to 
please you. 

RosENcARTEN—|[ Leading him to a chair.| Come 
and sit down over here. There! Now it’s all right. 
You must forget all about it. It makes no difference. 
[Again patting him on head affectionately.| No dif- 
ference at all, my dear child. 

KouceLtMan—| Deathly white, with staring eyes and 
spluttering with emotion, frantically grasps RosEn- 
GARTEN by the arm and pulls him to one side.| My 
God! It’s ghastly! Terrible! They’ve now seen he’s 
a fool, and that we’ve tricked them. We’re ruined! 
Lost! Lost! 

RosENGARTEN—| With explosive cheerfulness.| Lost! 
Why, Mervyn has solved the situation for us! The 
world will simply think he’s gone insane. We'll put him 
in a sanatorium, and his unsold pictures will be worth 
three times as much. [Slapping him vigorously on 
back.| Why, you old goose, don’t you see? We've 
won! 

KoucELMAN—| Completely dazed.| Won? 

RosENGARTEN—| T riumphantly.| Yes—won! 


CURTAIN 


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ACT IV 


The following day, about 4 P.M., in a private sana- 
torium in the suburbs of New York. 

A spacious airy room, with walls tinted pale 
grey. 

In rear, a door and large window open on to 
garden, giving one a glimpse of valetudinarian 
trees. Near the window is a scraggy, sapless lilac 
bush which is still endeavouring to produce a few 
pale anemic blooms. Farther on are narrow paths 
meagrely bordered with sooty crocuses and hya- 
cinths wmprisoned behind intercrossed iron hoops. 
There is an arid central plot, in the middle of 
which is a large plaque bearing the traditional 
device: “Keep off the grass.” Not even the most 
democratic lunatic has ever been known to trans- 
gress this cast-iron rule of the asylum. 

A white lacquered bed with brass trimmings ex- 
tends into room with head-post against middle of 
left wall. Alongside bed stands a small white 
lacquered night table, on which is an electric lamp 
with paper shade on swivel. 

At foot of bed ts a large square table covered 
by green and white plaid oil-cloth. 

To the right is a door leading into hall, a steam 
radiator, a sofa, and several comfortable chairs 
covered with washable chintz slips. 

There is not a straight architectural line in the 
room, as the corners, cornices, door-frames and 
wainscotings have all been rounded off. The room, 
in fact, is perfectly hygienic, with its enamelled 

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walls, bare floors, tub-rugs, and germ-proof 
corners. 

The only ornament in the room is the radiator, 
which has been decorated with “arty” scroll-work 
and has gilded feet “suggesting a spiffy atmos- 
phere of high breeding.” 

It is just the kind of room that any good mod- 
ern democratic scientist would choose for his ster- 
tlized honeymoon. 

Before curtain rises, a long low weeping moan 
is heard, answered by sardonic laughter. 

As curtain rises, Heap Doctor enters from hall 
door, right, followed by INTERNE. They are both 
in white jackets. Heap Doctor ts about fifty, 
wears glasses, ts clean-shaven, sallow, and has the 
skin of a dried apple. He fiddles continually with 
his eye-glasses, either adjusting them or wiping 
them with his handkerchief after heavily breathing 
on them. During this performance he blinks and 
squints after the manner of near-sighted people. 

Although not unsympathetic, he affects one, like 
so many professional American men, as being sex- 
less. It would be difficult to think of him in the 
role of a son or husband or father. 

Probably from having been surrounded for so 
long by pathological cases, he scrutinizes everyone 
suspiciously, as if seeking to detect and classify 
their particular variety of obsession or mania. 

The only secret of his life is behind a Yale lock 
in his fourth bureau drawer. 

On his last holiday trip to Europe, about eight 
months previous to opening of Act, he bought, 


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while in Paris, a pornographic book entitled Fan- 
nie’s Confessions, and he acquired at the same time 
a number of photographs of nude women in vari- 
ous poses, grasping riding whips. These, with the 
Confessions, he occasionally withdraws, when he is 
quite alone, from the fourth bureau drawer. 

The INTERNE is a healthy vigorous-looking 
young man, of about twenty-seven, of Danish ex- 
traction, with rosy baby face, empty blue eyes, 
and wavy blond hair. He has the buoyant, confi- 
dent, self-satisfied manner of one who has never 
suffered or been affected by the suffering of others. 

His greatest enjoyments in life are baseball 
games, jazzing, cinema, and practical jokes. | 

Although both he and the Heap Doctor are 
mentally alert and highly intelligent, one feels, 
nevertheless, that there is something abnormal, 
something lacking, about them. 

It may come as a rather surprising observation, 
but the vast majority of American men, especially 
those in science, impress me as suffering from vari- 
ous forms of arrested development as far as the 
worth-while things of life are concerned. 


IntTERNE—Yes, it was Mr. Rosengarten himself who 
telephoned—you know, of Kougelman Art Galleries. 
Wanted one of the best rooms in the sanatorium for a 
friend. 

Heap Doctor—This room ought to do. He didn’t 
explain case, I suppose? 

IntERNE—No. He merely said it was sudden mental 
breakdown. 


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Heap Doctror—Kougelman Galleries? Isn’t that 
where the famous Exhibition has been going on? 

InTERNE—Yep—Mervyn, and all that Mamas new 
art truck-muck; it’s created a tremendous hullabaloo 
in the Press. 

Heap Doctor—The latest fad, I suppose. I haven’t 
followed it. 

IntrErne—There are enormous head-lines about it 
again this evening in connection with the Packer ball. 
[Taking paper from his pocket.| Here, want to see it? 

Heap Doctor—|Unfolding paper.| Packer ball? 
I should say so! There’s nothing else. 

INTERNE—lI haven’t had time to read it; what’s it 
all about? 

Heap Doctror—|Reading head-lines.| ‘World- 
famous Artist goes Mad at Packer Ball.” ‘Mervyn, 
Creator of Mamasist Art, raves before Brilliant Gath- 
ering.” ‘Gorgeous Pageant turns to Tragedy.” 
“Guests leave in Dismay.” ‘All New York Society 
present.”’ 

InTERNE—Say, Doc., I bet this room is for 
Mervyn 

Heap Doctror—Possibly. .[Contimuimg to read.| 
“Last night in Mr. Ezra P. Packer’s magnificent new 
palace on Fifth Avenue, where the super-élite of New 
York society had been invited to a ball in honour of 
Mr. Mervyn—the most celebrated and universally dis- 
cussed artist in the world, who has revolutionized Art 
on both Continents—a poignant and most dramatic 
tragedy took place. Just after a gorgeous ballet, rival- 
ling in splendour The Arabian Nights, in which the 
brilliant and beautiful Duchess of Mandelieu, patron of 
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the Arts and Sciences, foremost leader of American and 
European society, war heroine, and one of the most 
distinguished littérateurs of the day, took the leading 
part .. .” and so on, and so on . . . “Hindoo philos- 
opher”—Oh, here we are: “Suddenly the great artist 
falters, turns deathly pale, and raising his arms in sup- 
plication to a beautiful Cinque Cento statue of the 
Virgin, which had recently been acquired for one hun- 
dred and fifty thousand dollars by Mr. Packer, cries 
out in anguish: ‘Oh, Mary! Mary! help me! save me! 
He then falls to his knees and, hiding his face in his 
hands, bursts into heart-rending sobs, while moaning 
out piteously that his name is John Brown and not 
Mervyn, and that he is only a poor fool and not a 
genius. The terrified guests withdraw in panic. Mrs. 
Packer, resplendent in her marvellous Mamasist cos- 
tume and wearing her celebrated emeralds, is carried 
unconscious from the room. ‘The situation is saved by 
the Duchess of Mandelieu,” and so on, and so on—there 
are pages and pages of it. Well, it looks like a clear 
case of “manic-depressive.” At any rate, if this room 
is for Mervyn, it will be a change to have a genius here 
thinking himself a fool. [Returning paper, strolls into 

garden. | 
InTERNE—Sure! There are enough fools thinking 
themselves geniuses all right. [Lights cigarette, and 
glances through paper.| It must have been darned 
dramatic. He’s not a bad-looking guy in this photo- 
graph. ‘‘Duchess of Mandelieu in Mamasist costume.” 
Gosh! the notoriety that dame has. She’s in every 
magazine and newspaper in the country. She’s a good 
looker all right, Jewish type; clever bunch, the Jews. 
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[Turns over page.| 'There’s practically nothing else 
in the paper; four full pages about this ball. Gawd! I 
wish I’d had a look-in. Must have been a hell of a 
show! What’s this? ‘The renowned scientist, Pro- 
fessor Percival Pinchum, buries pet cat in same grave 
as wife.” Spoofle! “By special cable from London: 
Eddie de Witt, American sportsman of international 
repute, organizes cockroach races in London. Favour- 
ite sport of English aristocracy. Cockroaches wear 
owners’ colours. Huge bets made on results.” One, 
two, three, four, five of it! How the devil can they pull 
five columns out of that? [Turning over another 
page.| ‘“Canary’s white coffin. All Tuxedo society 
turns out as mourners, with brass band, for Mrs. 
Marmaduke de Wilberforce’s celebrated song bird 
‘Bertie.’ ” Gee! what piffle! “Mr. Herman Goldstein 
of Middleburg, New York, known from coast to coast 
as the owner of ‘Alice G.,’ the fastest trotting mare in 
the world, advertises for live wire pastor with ‘pep.’ ” 
“Sex changed by modern science.” ‘Mr. Alexander 
Dupont, world-renowned altruist and philanthropist, 
offers himself to science to be transformed into woman 
by the wonder serum, with which the celebrated genius, 
Professor Siegfried Liebeskind, has already induced a 
hen to grow cock’s plumage, and a female frog to be- 
come the father of a family.” That’s going some! 
Another page of the Winterbottom divorce. Poor old 
Winterbottom has been getting a page of this every 
day for over two months. We’ll soon see Mrs. Winter- 
bottom in the “movies” as heroine of her own domestic 
scandals. Anything to be in the limelight and get your 
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mug in the papers! They’ll advertise their vices, tears, 
and even their dishonour, to be jawed about. 

Henry Mourtier—[ Who thinks himself “Loyal Pain- 
less Thompson,” appears in garden window. He is an 
enormously fat, flabby, middle-aged man, with old- 
fashioned side-whiskers. On his head he wears a tre- 
mendous pill, on which is painted, “We work while you 
dream.” The pill is held in place by bright green rib- 
bons tied under his chin in a huge bow-knot. Around 
his neck is suspended a large plaque on which is painted, 
in glaring red letters, “Loyal Painless Thompson’s lus- 
cious little lollipops for lazy languid livers.” | Cuckoo! 

IntErnE—[Looking up from paper.| Ah, Mr. 
Muller ! 

Muuiter—[Slightly annoyed and surprised.| Mr. 
Who? 

IntTERNE—Oh, excuse me, I mean Mr. Thompson, of 
course. 

Mutier—| Satisfied.} Ah! Dve just written an ex- 
quisite little eclogue; wouldn’t you like to hear it? 

InTERNE—I’m rather busy just now. 

Muutier—It won’t take a minute! Tm sure you'll 
love it. [Quickly taking poem, written on big sheet of 
paper, from his pocket, and pursing his lips with 
euphuistic enjoyment, he begins to read: | 


MY PILL IN SPRINGTIME 


Heigh-ho, Cuckoo, Cuckoo! 
When lovers hear the Cuckoo trill 
In the springtime, 
In the ringtime, 
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They think he’s calling to his mate; 
But if I must the truth relate, 
He’s calling from a shady rill 
For “Loyal Thompson’s” little pill. 
Hey nonino then, why be ill? 
For here’s a “’Thompson’s” liver pill! 


Heigh-ho, Cuckoo, Cuckoo! 


The lambs do gambol on'the hill 
In the springtime, 
In the ringtime. 
On the green sward by the river, 
Fancies flit ’twixt love and liver. 
In yellow beds of daffodil 
Let swain and lass caress at will; 
But lovers should not wed, until 
They take a *’Thompson’s” liver pill. 
Heigh-ho, Cuckoo, Cuckoo! 


InTERNE—Splendid, Mr. Thompson! That’s hot 
stuff. 

Mouxiurer—lIt’s Elizabethan in sentiment, isn’t it? 

InTERNE—Quite! it’s so merry and blithesome, and I 
particularly like those lines: 


“On the green sward by the river 
Fancies flit ’twixt love and liver.” 


Mutiter—| Puffing with naive pride.| Yes, it was a 
happy inspiration. [Eagerly drawing another large 
paper from his pocket.| But I have another poem here, 
which I think you'll like even better, entitled Liver, 
Life-Giver. [Door on right is suddenly opened, and 


Heap Doctor ushers in RosencarTEN. | 
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Heap Docror—We thought this room might do, Mr. 
Rosengarten. 

RosENGARTEN—Yes, it seems pleasant and cheerful. 

Heap Docror—lIt has a southern exposure, and 
opens onto the garden. 

Mvutier—[Still at window.] Good evening, gentle- 
men. I was about to read my latest poem, Liver, Life- 
Giver. Shall I begin? 

IntErNE—[Who has quickly walked into garden. | 
Come and read it to me in the garden, Mr. Thompson. 
| He takes him gently by the arm, and leads him away. | 

Mu.iiter—| Being led off reluctantly.] But I’m sure 
these gentlemen would like to hear it. [They withdraw 
arm in arm. | 

RosEncarTEN—|[Smiling.| Who is Mr. Thompson, 
Doctor? 

Heap Doctror—Oh, he’s one of our patients. He 
believes himself to be “Loyal Painless Thompson” of 
Liver Pill fame. His real name is Muller. 

RosencarTEN—That’s rather an odd illusion, isn’t it? 

Heap Docror—No; it may seem so, but when these 
cases are traced a posteriori, they become quite com- 
prehensible. 

RosencartEN—May I ask how that poor fellow 
came to believe himself “Loyal Painless Thompson”? 

Heap Doctror—Does it really interest you? 

RosEncARTEN—|[ Sitting down and offering Doctor a 
cigarette.| Immensely, Doctor !—especially since poor 
Mervyn’s breakdown. 

Heap Doctror—|[Sitting down also.| Well, Muller 
was a writer of considerable promise, I believe, and out 
of the earnings of his first successful book he built him- 
self a very attractive little house in the suburbs. From 


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what I heard, he put heart, soul and most of his money 
into it. One day he woke up to find an enormous bill- 
board advertising “Loyal Painless Thompson’s luscious 
little lollipops” blotting out his entire view. 

RosENGARTEN—By Jove! that was hard luck. 

Heap Doctror—Wasn’t it? He then brought a law- 
suit to have the sign removed, which he lost, of course, 
on the grounds of interfering with commerce and pro- 
gress. After that he brooded and worried so much over 
it all, he became neurasthenic, and finally entirely un- 
balanced. 

RosENGARTEN—Poor chap! And now he thinks he’s 
‘Loyal Painless Thompson”? What a fate! What 
cruel irony! 

Heap Docror-—Yes; and spends his day writing 
poems to advertise the very pill that was his undoing. 

RosENGARTEN—Fortunately he seems quite gay and 
happy. 

Heap Doctor—He is, unless you happen to mention 
Carter. 

RosENGARTEN—You mean the other pill man—his 
rival, I suppose? [A mocking sinister laugh is heard 
from without.| Your patients seem pretty cheerful 
here, Doctor. 

Heap Doctor—Oh, that’s our Devil laughing! 

RosENGARTEN—What makes him laugh?—has he 
ever told you? 

Heap Doctror—He’s most amusing at times. He 
says he laughs at humanity for working its way into 
Hell, when it could be playing its way into Heaven. 

RosENGARTEN—A clever devil, that! I suppose 
many of your patients suffer from religious mania? 


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Heap Docror—No. On the contrary, we have only 
two theomaniacs: that one who thinks he’s the Devil, 
and another who thinks he’s God ; but they’re altogether 
old-fashioned and out of date. Insanity no longer mani- 
fests itself in forms of religious fanaticism, but in what 
might be called Press Deliria and Bill-board Dementia. 

RosencarteEN—There are fashions in insanity too, 
then? 

Heap Doctror—Why, yes! Cesars and Napoleons, 
for instance, and Emperors and Queens, have entirely 
disappeared from our asylums. We haven’t had a 
Christ or a Virgin Mary for years. 

RosENGARTEN—|[Amused.| What’s the latest fash- 
ion now, Doctor? 

Heap Docror—Well, we have a Mr. Wanamaker, a 
Ford, a Lady Astor, Baby Cadum, Gillette, Dempsey, 
and, among others, a sweet little old lady who thinks 
she’s Clare Sheridan and that Trotsky brought about 
the Russian revolution for love of her. 

RoseNcarTEN—Ah, I see! All bill-board and news- 
paper celebrities. 

Heap Doctror—Entirely so! It will probably amuse 
you to hear that our last two patients call themselves 
Babe Ruth and Mrs. Asquith. 

RosencarteN—I should think you would have a 
number of Charlie Chaplins and Mary Pickfords too. 

Heap Docror—But we have; there are already 
three Charlies and two Marys. 

RosencarteN—I’ve never thought before how much 
the age reacts on various manifestations of insanity. 

Heap Docror—My patients are merely the patho- 

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logical result of commercial advertisement and a press- 
ridden, bill-boarded world. 

Rosencarten—Naturally, when you come to think 
of it, religious mania could only have happened in a 
religious age, when there was belief; but now that relig- 
ion is dead, and Royalty is looked upon as a farce, 
the feeble-minded become obsessed by what is constantly 
suggested to them. Even the strongest of us are caught 
more or less, I suppose. In fact, if I’m not mistaken 
—|[ Pointing to Doctor’s shoes.] Aren’t those Douglas 
shoes you’re wearing? 

Heap Doctror—|[Laughing.| And may I congratu- 
late you, Mr. Rosengarten, on your “Save tie, time, 
and temper Slidewell collar’’? 

RosENGARTEN—It’s an “Arrow.” [Doctor laughs. | 

Heap Docror—But to continue what we were say- 
ing. I’ve often wondered why we have no Lloyd 
Georges or Wilsons here. 

RosENGARTEN—Ah, but, Doctor, not even the feeble- 
minded take them over-seriously. It’s the same in 
all decadent ages. When Rome began to degenerate, 
the idols of the people were gladiators, charioteers and 
public entertainers. [A long moaning wail of despair 
is heard from without.| 'That’s God, I suppose? 

Heap Doctor—Yes, weeping, as he says, for the 
dreadful botch he made of humanity. 

RosENGARTEN—| Who has walked to window, looks 
into garden.| Goodness! who’s that out there in a 
frock coat and top hat? He looks like a wedding guest, 
in his white spats and enormous white boutonniére. 

Heap Doctror—|Glancing out of window.| Oh, that 
is the Rev. Simpkin-Sands. He thinks he’s Mr. Wana- 
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maker! Shall I call him in? He might interest you— 
& propos of our conversation. 

Rosrencarten—Yes, do! He imagines this is the 
“Wanamaker emporium,” I suppose? 

Heap Doctror—[Calling out.| Mr. Wanamaker! 
Do come in and meet a friend of mine, who finds your 
shop marvellous. 

A Man’s Votce—|[In distance.| With pleasure. 

Heap Doctror—He used to be a fashionable clergy- 
man from Philadelphia. Ill see if I can’t get him to 
spout one of his biblical speeches. 

Tue Rey. Smmpxrn-Sanps—[A man of about fifty, 
enters room with “pom-pomposity,” and shakes hands 
with RosencARTEN. He is not only “‘gotten up” like a 
wedding guest, but, in the language of our smart social 
weeklies, like a bridegroom of “assured social posi- 
tion.” | You have come, sir, at a very opportune 
moment, as we are selling to-day, regardless of cost. 
Our prices have been cut in half, and less than half. 

RosEncartEN—How lucky for me, Mr. Wanamaker! 

Heap Docror—Mr. Wanamaker, have you prepared 
your Sunday’s sermon yet of sales and special bar- 
gains? 

Srmpxin-Sanps—I was just pondering over it in the 
garden, while listening to our magnificent organ. 

RosENcarTEN—It’s so inspiring, Mr. Wanamaker, 
to listen to Bach or Wagner while selecting one’s winter 
underwear, or while buying a coal-scuttle or a canary! 

Smrpxin-Sanps—Your appreciation is most grati- 
fying. I installed the organ in my great cathedral of 
commerce to give the proper religious atmosphere. 

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Heap Doctror—But your sermon for next Sunday, 
Mr. Wanamaker? 

Simpk1n-Sanps—Be seated, gentlemen, in the pew 
yonder. [With a majestic gesture he waves them to 
the sofa with a madman’s conviction that tt is a pew. 
He begins to speak with the rising and falling inflection 
of a fashionable High-Church clergyman delivering his 
sermon. RosENcARTEN and Doctor obediently seat 
themselves on sofa.| “The flowers appear on the 
earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the 
voice of the turtle is heard in our land. My beloved 
is mine, in ‘envelope chemise of lemon Canton crépe,’ 
and I am hers in ‘mercerized Shantung Billieburke 
pyjamas.’ I will arise now and go about the city in 
the streets in ‘delux satinette pantalettes, doubled to 
the hip and shadow-proof’?; and in the broadways I 
will seek him whom my soul loveth, in his ‘Society Brand 
Form fitting Suit at 44 dollars 49.’ 

“How fair art thou, O love for dcieheas in thy 
modish ‘Sumptuous Six’ road-idyl comfort car, with 
tilted cushions, sun visor, windshield wiper and dome 
of heaven light. 

“I sleep but my heart waketh in my ‘347 dollar 
Louis Quinze four-piece suite’ and gaze with rapture 
at my ‘38 dollar 99 chifforobe reduced from 47 dollars 
50,’ in which are my beloved’s ‘chic Duchess Motoro 
suitings, Marchioness step-in drawers and smart Bar- 
oness tub-skirts.’ 

“I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by 
the roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye buy 


‘Alaska-made, Polar Bear Ascetic Refrigerators, side- 
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icer, which savour of esthetic discrimination and carry 
patrician distinction.’ 

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so 
panteth my soul after ‘Utopian Bath-tubs, Paradise 
Lavatories, and Nirvana Silentiums’ in plumbing sanc- 
tuaries, wherein is enthroned King Solomon, in a 
‘gleaming luxite breakfast coat with Nile-green rufflings 
of self-material at 39 dollars 93.’ 

“Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe 
upon the mountain of spices, in ‘our Slenderizing 
fashions for stout ladies, and our new self-reducing 
Corselette with the favoured low bust and elastic insert, 
made of flesh broché and orchid satin.’” [He stops, 
as though finishing a sermon, bows his head, clasps his 
hands in silent prayer, and then, with his eyes cast to 
Heaven, continues.| ‘Let us all join in singing Hymn 
No. 535.” [He begins to sing. | 


“Now the day is over, 
Night is drawing nigh; 
Shadows of the evening 
Steal across the sky; 
Comfort every sufferer 
Watching late in pain; 
Those who plan some evil 
From their sins restrain.” 


[After the first two lines he turns about and 
with a slow swinging gait disappears into gar- 
den, singing the while. His voice gradually 
fades away. The Doctor and RosENcarTEN 
continue in silence to exchange glances of sur- 
prised amusement. Door is suddenly opened by 

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InTERNE. Ducuess enters, holding large teak- 
wood box tied with yellow cords and tassels. She 
ts followed by Van Loon, carrying bowl of gold- 
fish, and Lrvineson, with nightingale in cage. 
INTERNE leaves room, after whispering few words 
to Docror. | 


Ducuess—|[In suppressed voice.| May we come in? 
How is he? Has he arrived yet? 

RosENGARTEN—Oh, Duchess, how kind of you to 
come! No, Mr. Kougelman is bringing him; they’ll 
be here any moment now. 

Ducuess—| Resuming natural voice.| We've just 
come from Wanamaker’s with these presents for him. 
What a wonderful shop! Why, it’s a cathedral of 
commerce!—with a marvellous organ playing Bach, 
and ascetic, priest-like floor-walkers bowing you into 
a paradise of lights, and colours, and everything 
imaginable. I made Van Rensselaer buy a nightingale. 
Mr. Van Loon’s idea was gold-fish. But just wait until 
you see what I’ve brought him in this teak-wood box! 

RosENGARTEN—It’s really too thoughtful of you 
to come away out here, Duchess! [Takes box from her 
and places it on table. | 

DucHress—Why, but of course! We would all have 
been here sooner, if it hadn’t been for my Charity 
Auction Sale at the Ritz for starving Austrian babies. 
[To the Docror.|] You are the “Médecin Chef,” I 
suppose? [Shaking hands and looking earnestly into 
his eyes.| You have such a kind face, I’m sure you'll 


take the best of care of our poor wonderful Mervyn. 
(256 ' 


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RosENGARTEN—The Duchess of Mandelieu, Doctor, 
is the patron saint of suffering humanity. 

Ducuess—Oh, but we have to look after our babies, 
even if they are enemy babies! Don’t we, Doctor? 

Docror—|[Embarrassed and self-conscious.| Er— 
you are quite right—er—Madam. 

DucuEess—You know I’ve done my bit; I have a 
baby. But you couldn’t expect Mr. Van Loon or Mr. 
Van Rensselaer-Levineson to understand; they’ve never 
had any. 

Lrvineson—[ With his usual bored drawl.| Where 
shall I put this damned bird-cage? 

Ducuess—| Maliciously.] Now, don’t be cross, Van 
Rensselaer. You see, Doctor, it always makes Mr. 
Van Rensselaer-Levineson furious when I talk about 
babies. He only fathers books. 

Van Loon—[Gallantly.] Our Duchess mothers 
both. 

Ducurss—[Opening boxr.|] Darling Normie! Now 
you'll all see what’s in the box. Doctor, it’s going to 
cure Mervyn, you know. 

Heap Docror—Why, what can it be? Vm most 
curious! 

Ducuess—[Taking large jade elephant out of bow 
and holding it out for general admiration.| See! isn’t 
he beautiful? A Chinese jade elephant of the Kien 
Lung period! Isn’t it, Van Rensselaer? We will now 
christen him Mumbo Jumbo. 

Van Loon—Oh! Gloria, what a wonderful name 
for him! Of course! Mumbo Jumbo. 

Ducuess—[Showing elephant to Docror.| I’m 

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sure you never thought of curing your patients with 
a jade elephant, now, did you? 

Heap Doctor—|[Smiling.] No: that’s a new idea, 
I must admit. 

Ducuess—But it’s a wonderful idea! A few years 
ago, when our Normie—Mr. Van Loon, you know— 
was frightfully upset, and neurasthenic over the ter- 
rible war, and all Paris thought he was quite mad 

Van Loon—Oh, I say! 

Ducuess—I cured him entirely with an elephant. 
Didn’t I, Normie? 

Van Loon—You certainly did, my dear Gloria. 

Ducurss—It was an intimate friend of mine, a 
famous Yogi, who explained to me, when I was in 
India shooting tigers, the exact science of stroking 
jade elephants at sunrise and sunset. It’s all so mys- 
terious and mystical. But Ill show you all that later, 
Doctor, and you can try it on your patients. 

Heap Docror—I’'ll be delighted to become your 
pupil, D—D—Duchess. 

Ducurss—But, Normie, where’s the Virgin? I 
told MacGhee to bring in the Virgin. 

Van Loon—TI'll just see. [He goes out. | 

Ducness—You can’t imagine what a time I had to 
get the Virgin from Mr. Packer. Poor Mrs. Packer 
has been in hysterics all day. You know, Doctor, the 
moment dear Mervyn broke down in his speech he 
cried out to the Virgin for help. ... It was too 
pitiful—too terribly tragic. 

RosEncARTEN—|T'o Docror.| The Duchess is re- 
ferring to a statue of the Virgin in Mr. Packer’s 
gallery. 

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Heap Docror—[ Less bewildered.| Ah, I see! 

Ducurss—Yes, and I finally persuaded Mr. Packer 
that Mervyn absolutely needed his Virgin to get well. 
[Van Loon returns, followed by a diminutive, fat, bal- 
loon-like, claret-faced chauffeur and a tall English 
footman. Both are dressed in the Mandelieu liveries, 
covered with braid and silver buttons embossed with 
ducal coronets. They carry in Virgin between them. | 
Ah! there she is. [J'o chauffeur.]| MacGhee, be care- 
ful; don’t drop her. Put her there on the table. [Im- 
patiently.| Normie, quickly take off your gold-fish, 
and your cage, Van Rensselaer. No, no, MacGhee; how 
stupid! Turn her face towards the bed—like that! 

MacGurre—Yes, your Grace. [Touches cap. | 

Ducuess—| Waving servants away.| 'There, that’s 
all! That’s all! [Eweunt servants.| What an idea! 
[With mock intensity.| Imagine putting a Virgin 
with her back to the bed! But MacGhee’s a good old 
thing, and he has the grotesque chic of a little fat sea 
monster or a hobgoblin—but such a snob. [General 
laughter. | 

Van Loon—Good servants are always snobs, Gloria. 

Ducuess—But he’s even a rank Royalist, Normie! 
It’s so amusing to be a Socialist oneself and have a 
Royalist as chauffeur. You know I’m a Socialist, 
Doctor! 

Lrvineson—The most exclusive Socialists nowadays 
have Royalist chauffeurs. 

Ducuess—[Admiring Virgin.]| There, isn’t she 
divine! You’ve never had a fifteenth-century Della 
Quercia Virgin here before, have you, Doctor? 

Lrevineson—|[Adjusting his monocle and looking 

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about room.| It’s rather an odd place for gold-fish, 
a nightingale, an elephant, and a Primitive Virgin. 

Ducuess—Odd place! Why, Van Rensselaer? You 
see, Doctor, Mr. Van Rensselaer-Levineson is so ab- 
sorbed in his books that he has no understanding of 
suffering humanity at all. To really understand the 
sufferings of others one must have suffered oneself. 

Hzap Docror—lI see you are a_ psychologist, 
Duchess. 

Ducuess—Of course Normie and I understand. We 
worked in the war hospitals, but Van Rensselaer abso- 
lutely refused. He said the bad odours drove away 
all thoughts of his Italian Primitives. 

Lrevineson—To say the least, it is difficult to com- 
bine primitive odour with primitive art. 

Ducuess—You hear that, Doctor? I’m sure he 
doesn’t even appreciate the tragedy of last night. 
Think of it! The greatest painter of the century 
being suddenly clouded by madness! It’s like an 
eclipse, for art is sunlight. Without art we would 
be groping in the night. Speak up, Normie! Isn’t 
that true? 

Van Loon—[Sententiously.] To me, last night was 
the most heart-rending scene I’ve ever witnessed. I 
saw nothing more dramatic during the entire war, 
and I was in Paris the whole time. 

Lrevineson—| Aside.]| Except when he ran to Bor- 
deaux and became a “Tournedos a la Bordelaise.” 

Ducuess—Bravo! I love Normie for his big heart. 
You see, we understand each other perfectly, as I’m 


an oxygen woman, and he’s a nitrogen man, which is 
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the latest scientific theory of sympathy, as the Doctor 
can tell us. 

Heap Doctor—Well—er—er [Door opens, 
and INTERNE, carrying Mervyn’s_ travelling-bag, 
ushers in KoucELman, who is holding Mervyn by the 
arm. A hush falls over everyone, and after a moment of 
general suspense Rosencarten steps forward and, tak- 
img Mervyn by the arm, gently leads him to large 
chair in centre of room. Interne places bag on chair 
near bed and goes out. | 

RosENcARTEN—|Soothingly.| We’ve all been wait- 
ing for you, my dear boy; sit down here. [Mervyn sits 
down docilely.| Your friends have all come to see you. 

Mrrvyn—|[After looking about in silence.] Oh, 
there’s my fairy godmother! 

Ducuess—|[Talking to him as if he were a small 
child.| Yes, dear, your fairy godmother has brought 
you a pretty present. [She hastens to fetch teak-wood 
box, and drops to her knees beside his chair.| There, 
now, open the box and see what’s inside. [While 
Mervyn is opening box she exchanges glances of com- 
passionate sympathy with Van Loon. | 

Mervyn—|[T aking elephant from box, with sur- 
prised pleasure.| Oh, it’s a beautiful elephant, like 
the one I love so in the circus! 

Kovucretman—| Who, since his entrance, has been 
nervously mopping great beads of perspiration from 
his brow. Aside to RosencarTeN, breathlessly.| God! 
we had the most terrible time! You can’t imagine what 
it was shaking off the reporters—and camera men 
forcing their way into our rooms, and crowds of hys- 
terical women fighting like maniacs in the corridors 

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—telephones ringing—telegrams—and the secretaries 
losing their heads! The police finally got us out by the 
back entrance. I almost went out of my mind! 

RosENcARTEN—|[Smiling sympathetically. | As 
usual, Isaac. 

Ducuess—| Who has been showing Mervyn the ele- 
phant.| Now wait till you see what Mr. Van Loon 
has brought you. Normie, bring your present. 

Van Loon—J[Nervous and embarrassed, walks to- 
wards MrRvYN, swinging bowl of gold-fish suspended 
on gilded chain.| We thought—er—you would like— 
er—to watch the shimmering, eh—iridescent colours of 
these gold-fish in the sunlight. 

Mervyn—|[Simply and naturally.| Oh, thank you 
so much, Mr. Van Loon! How beautiful they are! 

Ducuess—| Holding wp bird-cage.| And here’s a 
wonderful nightingale that your dear friend, Mr. Van 
Rensselaer-Levineson, has brought you. He’ll sing to 
you every morning. 

Mervyn—|([Getting up with elephant clasped in his 
arms.| A nightingale! Oh, Mr. Van Rensselaer- 
Levineson, how kind of you! Marie loved nightin- 
gales. [Suddenly noticing Virgin with delight.| But 
there she is! She always comes to me! It makes me 
feel so happy that she never forgets me, and is near 
me all the time. 

Ducuess—|[ Aside to Rosrencarten and others.] 
You see how right I was. I understood. And see how 
he loves his elephant too! 

Heap Docror—[ Amused, and with more self-assur- 
ance.| Duchess, I may have to call on you to treat 
our other patients. 

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Ducurss—Oh, but I’m coming out here often now. 
[Glances at wrist watch.| Heavens! how late it is. 
I must fly. The English Ambassador will be waiting. 
He particularly wanted to see me before dinner to talk 
over the Irish question. Valera is an intimate friend 
of mine, you know. And after the Opera, what do 
you think I’m going to do? 

Van Loon—That would be difficult to predict, 
Gloria. 

Levineson—[Dryly.| Only a fool would try. 

Ducuess—Aren’t you both rude! Well, I’m taking 
the midnight train to Washington, to confer with the 
President about conditions in Russia. I received an 
urgent telegram this morning from the Secretary of 
State, begging me to come immediately. 

Van Loon—He must have been reading your bril- 
liant articles in The New Republic and The Nation. 

Lrevinrson—| Aside.| My brilliant articles! 

Ducuess—And I have another appearing in The 
Call next week. You must read them, Doctor. I'll 
send them to you, for I’m sure that you, like all of us, 
are a “New Republic sort of person,” aren’t you? 

Heap Docror—Well—eh—I’m sure to become one 
after I’ve read your articles, Duchess. 

Ducuess—I’m certain you will, Doctor, for you 
already look like one. Van Rensselaer, are you com- 
ing with us? 

LrevinEson—No; but T’ll drop into your opera box 
later on for the last act of Walkiire. 

Ducuess—|[ Walks over to Mervyn, who is fas- 
einated by nightingale.| I knew you’d love him. 
[Kissing him theatrically on forehead.| Your fairy 

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godmother will be back very soon. [T'o RosENGcARTEN, 
impressively.| Telephone me how he is to-morrow, 
Mr. Rosengarten. [T'o Koucrtman.| Au _ revoir! 
Good afternoon, Doctor! [With hushed voice, while 
shaking hands with him.| If only you had known 
Mervyn before! You can’t imagine how painful it is 
for me to see him like this. He was the most brilliant 
conversationalist I’ve ever met. Brilliant—perfectly 
scintillating! you know. 

Heap Doctror—|[Opening door for Ducuxss and 
following her out.] It’s certainly a pitiful case, but 
we'll do our best. [Eweunt both.| 

Van Loon—[Under his breath, with histrionic emo- 
tion, looking at Mrrvyn.] Sublime genius, gone for 
ever. [ Aloud, with affected cheerfulness.| Good-bye, 
dear friend! [Waving his hand to Mervyn, and 
including others.| Good-bye! Later at the Opera, 
Van Rensselaer. [He hurries out after Ducuess. | 

Lrvineson—[Nods to Van Loon, then wnder his 
breath.|] Old leech! [Supper bell is heard.| I re- 
mained to have a talk with you, Rosengarten, about 
the general situation. 

KovucELMan—Yes, Levineson, we'd better talk 
things over. 

Lrevinrson—Van Rensselaer-Levineson, please. 

Koucretman—[Smiling.| Of course. I always 
forget! 

IntErNE—[Entering room.| The supper bell has 
rung, Mr. Rosengarten; I’ll take Mr. Mervyn into the 
dining-room. 

Rosrencarten—[7'0 Mervyn.| Go with this kind 


gentleman, dear Mervyn; it’s time for supper. 
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Merrvyn—Yes, Mr. Rosengarten. You’re not going 
away? 

RosENGARTEN—Oh no! We'll be here when you 
come back. 

IntTERNE—|[Leading Mervyn out by arm.| Tm 
sure you’re going to like it here; we have such a 
lovely garden. Tl show it you to-morrow. 

Mervyn—Like my little garden in France? 

InTERNE—Yes, yes. [They go out together.]| 

KovcreLmMan—|Clearing his throat and lighting a 
cigarette.| Well, what’s to happen now? 

Lrvinrson—|[IJronically.| I suppose Mr. Mervyn 
will remain here a certain time at our expense, and then 
be sent back home? 

RosENGARTEN—| With pointed emphasis to LEvINE- 
son.| Yes, at owr expense. Under the circumstances, 
I think we can afford it. 

Kovucretman—|Apprehensively.| From what I 
gather, this is about the most expensive sanatorium 
in the country. 

Levineson—|[Sarcastically.| Our friend Rosen- 
garten seems to like to do things on a large scale. 

RosENGARTEN—That comes, perhaps, from seeing 
the disastrous consequences of things done on a small 
scale. 

Lzvinrson—The scale, I think, should depend 
largely on the profits. 

RosENGARTEN—Excellent business acumen! We 
entirely agree. And since our profits amount to 
[To Kovucrtman.| About how much, Isaac? 

KovucretmMan—In round figures I should say a 

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million, as we’ve sold about a hundred pictures, aver- 
aging ten thousand dollars apiece. 

RosENcGARTEN—But our profits don’t stop there! 

KoucELMAN—No; for as Mervyn is now dead in 
the eyes of the world, we can sell his remaining pic- 
tures for three times what we’ve been asking for them. 

LrvinEson—[Smiling sardonically.| The grave is 
not as beneficial to doctors as it is to undertakers 
and picture-dealers. 

RosENGARTEN—Or to art critics and other lit- 
erary scavengers. [Offering cigarette.| A cigarette? 
[Levineson hesitates for a moment, and then takes 
cigarette with a venomous smile. | 

KovucretmMan—|[Clearing his throat, with hopes of 
clearing the atmosphere.| Ahem . .. Well, as I was 
saying, I think we'll net, all told, about a million and 
a half. 

RosENcARTEN—Which will allow us to give a sub- 
stantial present to Mervyn’s mother. 

Lrvineson—[Sarcastically.| Do you think that 
necessary? 

RosENGARTEN—|Innocently.| Don’t you? 

KovcetmMan—| With nervous apprehension.| I sup- 
pose you would certainly consider ten thousand dol- 
lars very substantial; wouldn’t you, J.R.? 

Levineson—|[Emphatically.| Ridiculously substan- 
tial, I should say! 

RosENGARTEN—|[Slowly and decisively.| Well, gen- 
tlemen, I propose to see that the old lady and Mervyn 
get one hundred thousand dollars, at least. 

KovcetmMan—|Dwmbfounded.| One hundred thou- 
sand dollars! Are you mad? 

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Lrvineson—|[ Suddenly straightening himself in his 
chair and losing his usual blasé manner.| Preposter- 
ous! Insane! Idiotic! 

RosENcARTEN—|[ Buoyantly.| Well, if you are both 
dissatisfied with my suggestion, which, by the way, I 
intend to insist upon, why not make another million 
and a half? It would be even simpler this time. 

KoucretmMan—|Staggered.| Another million and a 
half? [Under his breath.| What’s coming now? 

RosENGARTEN—Why not? We will merely have 
Mervyn continue to paint, and this time we’ll exploit 
him as a madman, who has, nevertheless, retained his 
genius for painting. Van Rensselaer-Levineson will 
write another book, which he might call, let us say, 
Creative Madness. Our scientists and art critics, ever 
eager for self-advertisement and notoriety, will be 
delighted to do the rest through the Press. 

Kovucrtman—| Regretfully.| I really believe you 
could do it, J.R., but my nerves couldn’t stand the 
strain. 

RosENGARTEN—[ Pacing up and down, smoking ciga- 
rette.| It’s up to you two to decide. But when I 
think of our President solemnly declaring that there 
was such a thing as being “too proud to fight,” and 
then plunging us into war “to end all wars,” with the 
slogan “fof making the world safe for Democracy” ; 

. and Mr. Ford, while twenty-three nations were 
fighting, gaily sailing forth from New York, to end 
the world war and restore brotherly love, in his Ark 
of Peace bedecked with olive branches, lilies, and stuffed 
turtle-doves dangling in the companion-way;... or 
Thomas, the English Labour leader, who declared, with 

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tears trickling down his cheeks, on the morning of the 
great coal-strike which almost ruined England, and 
which he had organized and carefully brought about, 
that “it was the saddest day of his life’; ... and 
when I see Mr. H. G. Wells, the most successful literary 
financier the world has ever seen, accepted as seer and 
philosopher; ... and Sir Oliver Lodge, England’s 
celebrated scientist, writing that his dead son is clam- 
ouring from a spirit-world for a Ford car and a good 
cigar, ... I can’t see why—since we are living in 
an epoch when statecraft, business, science and letters 
are in the hands of these and other equally picturesque 
leaders—you should foresee the slightest difficulty in 
realizing my proposition. 

Lrevineson—[ Who has regained his composure and 
English drawl, rising.| Perhaps not; but the world 
will have to be satisfied; I think, with one book from 
me on Mervyn. I must be off now, as I’m dining to- 
night with the Prince of San Martino. I trust, how- 
ever, that you will reconsider your philanthropic 
outburst. But we will discuss that later. [Dryly.] 
Good night! 

KouceLMAn—Good night, Levineson-Van Rensselaer 
—I mean Van Rensselaer-Levineson! [LEvinEson goes 
out, adjusting his monocle.| What a rotter! Of 
course I’ll stand with you about the hundred thou- 
sand, J.R., if you feel that way about it. 

RosENcARTEN—I know I can always count on you, 
Isaac, to do the right thing. 

KovuceLmMan—|[Mournfully.| It’s pretty hard for 
me to think, though, that a hundred thousand dollars 
is the right thing. 

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RosEncarteN—My dear friend, we are exploiters, 
if you will, but not crooks, for while benefiting our- 
selves we also benefit our dupes. 

KoucEetmMan—We’ve certainly benefited Mervyn! 

Rosencarten—|[In a spirit of self-justification. ] 
The political chameleons are the crooks. There you 
have the real criminal exploiters, who call themselves 
Socialists and altruists, and sputter about self-sacri- 
fice, and yet wouldn’t hesitate for an instant, in order 
to gratify their personal ambitions, to drag their be- 
fuddled dupes through bloodshed and every conceivable 
horror. The tragic farce of it all is, that these traitors 
to humanity are immortalized in literature, bronze and 
marble, and go down into history as public benefactors. 

Kovucetman—I think you are right. 

RosENGARTEN—Personally, I’m inclined to believe 
that all Utopian uplifters and public welfare prattlers 
are either scoundrels or opportunists or egomaniacs. 
[Enter Heap Doctor, leaving door open behind him. | 

Heap Docror—I suppose, Mr. Rosengarten, that 
you would like to see Mr. Mervyn before you leave? 

RosENGARTEN—Yes, we’re waiting to say good 
night. 

Heap Docror—He’s already made friends at table 
with our most amusing inmate. We call him Don 
Quichote. He was an artist before he became our 
patient. 

RosrencarteN—He surely can’t equal Mr. Wana- 
maker ? 

Heap Docror—I assure you he’s even better. 


Wait till you hear him on Democracy and Science. 
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KovucetmMan—|[Surprised, to Docror.| Is Mr. 
Wanamaker one of your patients? 

Heap Doctror—[Laughing.| No! but we have one 
who thinks he’s Mr. Wanamaker. [Merrvyn and Don 
QUICHOTE appear in doorway, and enter room arm in 
arm. | 

MERVYN 
much. 

Don Quicuote—|[T all, gaunt, and emaciated. The 
length of his long narrow pale face is accentuated by 
a pointed grizzly beard and drooping moustachios. 
From under overhanging shaggy brows his deep-set 
black eyes flash with fanatical fervour. His iron-grey 
hair bristles with courage, defiance and sincerity. He 
ts enveloped in a shabby old black Spanish cape with 
wide velvet collar, worn and greasy. One end of the 
cape is gallantly tossed back over his left shoulder. 
He strikingly resembles the “Knight of the Sad Counte- 
nance.” With a sweeping gesture towards MErvyn. | 
At last I’ve met an honest man. He tells me the world 
calls him a genius, but that he’s only a poor fool. 
[Kovucreiman’s large pearl scarf-pin suddenly rivets 
his attention. He assumes a majestic pose, and with 
arm outstretched, pointing towards the pin, he an- 
nounces rhetorically.| 'That’s a Tecla! 

KovcetmMan—|[Taken off his guard, gives himself 
away by putting his hand involuntarily to his scarf- 
pin.| My pearl! How do you know? 

Don QuicHoTtE—Because everything now is sham 
and imitation. Even the food we eat is tricked, artifi- 
cial. Our very characters are tampered with. We are 
no longer allowed to be ourselves, but are forced to 


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affect standardized personalities; and the magazines 
and newspapers, with catch-phrases and illustrations, 
drive their advertisements into our brains of how to 
be successful in business; of ingratiating society table- 
talk; of how to appear cleverer, richer or better born 
than you are—in fact, of how to pretend, to fool others, 
and be what you’re not. 

RosENcARTEN—Bravo! Sir Knight. 

Heap Doctror—Bravo! Don Quichote. 

Don Quicuote—|[ Firing up under applause.| It’s 
all humbug, deception, counterfeit, cheat, untruth. 
The whole thing’s a lie. We live in lies, buy and sell 
lies, defend lies, fight for les, die for lies. Science 
has ruined us, degenerated us. We’re starved out— 
lost! Humanity has become rotten. We have sunk 
to such depths of materialism and are so steeped in 
decadence that even our artists and poets turn from 
nature to science for inspiration. We now have paint~ 
ings of machinery, machine-shop music, and odes to 
carburettors, boilers, pistons and spark-plugs. It’s 
no longer ‘“‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
shall see God,” but “Blessed are the pure in science, 
for they shall see machines.” 

RosENcARTEN—Hear! hear! 

Don QuicuoTtE—Before science there was faith—men 
believed; there was hope, happiness, love, chivalry, 
legend; there was art—true art. Truth lies in faith, 
which is limitless, and faith is the only approach to 
Heaven, to God; for God is Truth! Look at the 
Tower of Babel, the first scientific attempt to get to 
Paradise—to obtain truth. A babbling chaos was 
the result. For the last century scientists have been 

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building up another Tower of Babel, which is crum- 
bling. And we are now left in despair with devilish 
machinery in the ghastly gloom of scientific jargon, 
under grimy skies, in a world of newspapers, maga- 
zines, sky-scrapers, factories and bill-boards. [| Look- 
ing from one to the other he finally fixes Mervyn. | 
Do you know why the Devil was expelled from 
Heaven? 

Mervyn [Quietly.] Because old Ellen said he was 
a wicked angel. 

Don QuicnotEe—|[Continues, oblivious to answer. |. 
Because he was the first scientist and democrat; be- 
cause he tried to introduce science and democracy into 
the Kingdom of Heaven. And out of his scientific Hell 
have come these factories, sweatshops, and monstrous 
machines, which have annihilated segregation, without 
which art must perish, and have ground us into slaves 
of standardization, seriality, monotony, equality. We 
have been flattened out into the same pattern—into 
identicalism. We dress alike, look alike, act alike. We 
are alike. The possibility of aloofness, and even the 
sanctity of our privacy, wherein alone can bloom faith, 
love, dream, imagination and individuality, have been 
stolen from us by the telephone, telegraph, wireless, 
motor, press, camera. And science, by enslaving us 
with senseless, useless activities, has robbed us of the 
greatest of all luxuries—leisure. It was the Devil, 
that scientific proletarian, who invented equality and 
democracy, in order to combat nature’s sublime in- 
equality and infinite variety, which are the works of 
God. [Suddenly pointing to Koucetman.]. And what 
do you think the Devil’s latest propaganda is? 

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Kovucetman—[Embarrassed, again ivoluntarily 
puts his hand to his scarf-pin.| I—er—can’t imagine! 

RosENGARTEN—He’s certainly a lively propagandist. 

Don Quicnote—lIt’s to fool us into thinking that 
Christ was a scientific Socialist. And what, I ask you, 
could be more unspiritual, more unchristian, than 
science? He has, nevertheless, caught in his net mil- 
lions of poor gullible ones, who call themselves Scientific 
Christians and Christian Scientists and Socialists. And 
these poor creatures think they are following in the 
paths of that Holy Poet, that supreme aristocrat, the 
thirty-second descendant of the Royal House of David, 
who said, ‘To those who have shall be given, and from 
those who have not, shall be taken away, even the little 
that they have.” That’s art, aristocracy, religion, true 
biology—Gop—the antithesis of science, democracy 
and atheism. These are the microbes with which the 
Devil, through his agents, infects the weak-minded, 
the envious, treacherous, the unimaginative, who are 
always ready to serve him. [Same sinister laughter is 
heard in distance. | 

Heap Docror—He’s laughing at you, Don Quichote. 

Don Quicuote—| With haughty dignity.) The 
ignoble and the mean of spirit will always laugh at me. 
For I preach palaces and hovels, drones and workers, 
intelligence and stupidity, genius and idiocy, beauty and 
ugliness, morality and immorality, success and failure, 
light and shadow, rain and sunshine, tears and laughter, 
love and hatred, Heaven and Hell. 

Heap Doctor—|[Seizing this opportunity to end 
tirade, jumps up.| Splendid, Don Quichote! I con- 
gratulate you! 

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RosENGARTEN 





[Shaking his hand with enthusiasm. | 
Magnificent! A supreme doctrine! I hope we'll meet 
often, Sir Knight. 

Heap Doctror—|T'0 Don Quicnote.| Well, now we 
must say good night. [Jo RosrencartEn.| We keep 
early hours here, you know. 

Don Quicuotr—|[Silencing Doctor with uplifted 
hand, and with voice of deep melancholy.| I thank you 
all for your extreme courtesy, and the appreciation you 
have shown to an artist, aristocrat, soldier, lover and 
believer, who has had his heart broken by the levelling 
brutality of democracy, and his brain shattered by the 
cold-blooded viciousness of science, but whose spirit 
for ever remains inviolate and undaunted. [With a 
royal gesture.| Gentlemen, I salute you. I have the 
honour to bid you farewell. [He makes a low bow, 
and with supreme dignity withdraws. | 

Heap Docror—I knew he’d amuse you. 

RosENGARTEN—| Pensively.| Extraordinary! Amaz- 
ing ! 

Heap Docror—[To Mervyn.| Mr. Mervyn, if 
you'll prepare yourself for bed, I’ll be in later. 

RosENGARTEN—We’ll stay only a minute, Doctor. 
[Docror nods and goes out. | 

RosENcARTEN—| Shaking his finger at KouceLMan. | 
Ah, Isaac, you fooled us all with your Maharajah 
pearl, but it took a madman to detect it! 

Kovcretman—|WNettled.] Only a fool could have! 
[He begins to unpack MeErvyn’s bag, and lays out 
dressing-gown on the bed. | 

RosENGARTEN—|Smiling.| Well, I didn’t. [Twurn- 
ing to Mervyn.| And now, dear boy, we’re going to 
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leave you here to-night, but we’ll be back to-morrow. 
And when you are rested, and feeling stronger, we’re 
going to take you home to your mother and old Ellen 
in France. [Holding his hand affectionately.| That 
will make you happy, won’t it? 

Mrrvyn—Oh yes, very happy! But you and Mr. 
Kougelman will come and live with us too, won’t 
your 

RosEncarten—| Deeply touched.| Of course we’ll 
always see each other. Now good night, dear boy! 
Sleep well, and happy dreams. [Kisses him on brow. | 

KoucetmMan—l’ve arranged all your things for you, 
Mervyn. 

Mervyn—Oh, thank you, Mr. Kougelman! You 
will come back to-morrow? 

RosENGARTEN—|[Waving hand from door.| Yes, 
to-morrow. [He goes out, followed by KovucEtman. | 

Mervyn—| Left alone, slowly divests himself of his 
coat, collar and tie, leaving his throat bare. As he 
puts on white dressing-gown he gazes rapturously at 
the statue of the Virgin, which is enveloped in a flood 
of moonlight, streaming in from the garden window. 
The statue again appears to be miraculously dlumi- 
nated. He then sinks quietly to his knees and joins 
his hands in prayer. The light from the shaded elec- 
tric lamp on his night-table falls full on his face. After 
a moment’s pause he slowly and dreamily begins his 
evening prayer. | 


“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, 
Look upon a little child. 
Pity my simplicity, 

Suffer me to come to Thee.” 


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God bless Mother, and old Ellen, and my Father, and 
little cousin Marie, who are with you in Heaven. And 
please, dear God, take me back soon to our little 
garden in France, and make me a poor fool again. 
I’m so very, very tired of being a genius. And God 
bless my Fairy Godmother and my dear kind friends, 
Mr. Joseph Rosengarten and Mr. Isaac Kougelman 
and Mr. Van Rensselaer-Levineson, for Jesus Christ’s 
sake. Amen. 


[As curtain slowly descends, sounds of weeping 


are heard as before, followed by the same sinister 
laughter. | 


La Napoutez, 1921-1922. 


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